As of April 2026 the UK government has introduced new regulations tracking children outside traditional school settings. Here is a complete guide to the new rules for home educating families.
April 2026 marks a significant shift in the regulatory environment for home educating families in England. For the first time, parents who choose to educate their children outside the school system are required to register with their local authority under the Children Not in School provisions of the Education (Attendance)(Amendment) Act.
This is not a ban on home education. Your legal right to educate your child at home remains firmly intact. But the days of complete regulatory invisibility are ending, and families need to understand what the new rules require — and what they do not.
Under the new regulations, parents who are home educating their children must register with their local authority within a specified timeframe. Registration requires providing basic information including the child's name, age and address and a brief description of the educational provision being made.
Importantly, registration does not mean inspection. Local authorities do not have an automatic right to enter your home or to assess your educational provision against the national curriculum. The duty under the Education Act 1996 — that parents must ensure their child receives a suitable full-time education — remains the standard, and suitability is not defined by reference to the national curriculum.
What registration does is create a record of children outside the school system, enabling local authorities to fulfil their safeguarding duties and to offer support to families who want it.
It is important to be clear about what the new regulations do not require, because there has been significant confusion and some misinformation circulating in home educating communities:
Your legal right to determine the content, style and approach of your child's education at home remains protected (Education Act 1996, s.7).
The government's stated rationale for the Children Not in School register is safeguarding. In recent years, several high-profile child protection cases have involved children who were withdrawn from school — theoretically to be home educated — but were in practice being neglected or abused outside the sight of any statutory agency.
The register is intended to ensure that local authorities know which children are not in school, enabling them to make contact with families and ensure children are safe. This is a legitimate and proportionate safeguarding objective, and the majority of home educating families — who are providing excellent provision and have nothing to hide — should have no concerns about registration.
Registration is handled by your local authority. Contact your local authority's children's services or education department to find out the specific process in your area. Many local authorities now have dedicated pages on their websites for home education registration.
You will need to provide basic information about your child and your educational provision. You do not need to provide detailed lesson plans, schemes of work or evidence of outcomes at this stage — though local authorities may follow up with requests for more information in some circumstances.
Home education can be an enormously rewarding experience for both children and families. It can also be challenging — particularly in specialist subjects at GCSE and A-level, where depth of expertise matters and access to laboratory equipment, peer collaboration and external examination is important.
At Academica Mentoring we provide specialist tuition support for home educating families across a wide range of subjects and levels. Whether you need regular one-to-one tuition, help preparing for external examinations or advice on structuring your home education programme we would be delighted to help.