Guidance

Elective home education

Guidance for local authorities and schools about children educated at home.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 1 November 2007
• Last updated: 19 August 2024 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

Elective home education: guidance for local authorities

PDF, 508 KB, 42 pages

Elective home education: guidance for parents

PDF, 458 KB, 24 pages

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Elective home education: revised funding information for local authorities

PDF, 92.3 KB, 2 pages

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Details

This is for:

• local authorities
• schools

It relates to the following legislation:

• European Convention on Human Rights, Article 2 of Protocol 1
• Education Act 1996, Section 7

It details local authorities’ roles, responsibilities and the legislation they need to follow. It also includes information on home schooling funding.

Read the Working together to improve school attendance guidance for more information about how school attendance codes should be used to record the attendance of pupils. Pupils who are being flexi-schooled should be marked as absent from school during the periods when they are receiving home education.

Published 1 November 2007
Last updated 19 August 2024 + show all updates

1. 19 August 2024

   Updated 'Elective home education: guidance for local authorities' with 2 new sets of attendance regulations that came into force on 19 August 2024.

2. 2 April 2019

   'Elective home education: guidance for local authorities' and 'Elective home education: guidance for parents' replaces 'Home education guidelines for local authorities'. The funding information remains unchanged.

3. 1 November 2007

   First published.