There are some counterintuitive differences between the US and the UK. One of them is this: home education has always been far easier in the UK, legally speaking, than across the Atlantic. But that is all about to change.
In states across the US, the right to home educate, and the attendant level of government oversight (e.g. registration, submitting planned curricula, proving progress etc.) has always varied wildly. But in the UK it has always been very simple: centuries of English common law mean that if a parent wishes to keep their child at home to be educated it is none of the government’s business.
The rising home education figures are not a simple story of child abuse hidden in plain sight
This makes sense after even a moment’s consideration: British mass education is a Victorian social experiment. The Elementary Education Act of 1880 legislated that all children aged 5 and 10 must receive an education. But people have been having children for quite a bit longer than that, and no reform has removed the right to keep one’s children at home.
Indeed, the default status of any British child can be considered to be home education. Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 states that the duty to ensure that eligible children are educated, ‘by regular attendance at school or otherwise’, lies with parents, not with the state. The state’s sole duty at this juncture is to provide schooling for those who wish to avail themselves of it or have no other choice.
Properly speaking then, sending one’s child to the local comprehensive is delegating one’s duty of education to the state. Section 437 of the Education Act allows local education authorities to intervene, but not at their whim; rather, only ‘if it appears… that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education’.
This is the legal reality. But in practice, most parents assume education is the duty of the state. Many local authorities, meanwhile, are staffed by zealous ideologues who see elective home education as enough reason in itself to judge that a child ‘appears’ to not be receiving a suitable education, and distress home-educating parents by insisting upon information and home visits to which the local authorities have no legal right.
Yet parents who do know their rights are making more use of them than ever. According to government statistics, the total number of UK children in elective home education as of December 2024 is 111,700, around 1.4 per cent, up from 92,000 just a year earlier and double the 2019 figure.
Why such growth? High-profile reasons mentioned usually include problem categories like mental health, bullying, special educational needs (SEND) dissatisfaction, post-Covid absenteeism, abuse, and off-the-books Islamic and Orthodox Jewish schools.
However, if we compare the most recent figures to those from 2022, the only point on which this proves true is mental health (though note that the Department for Education only began collecting data in 2022, and it was only in 2024 that this included 100 per cent of local authorities). In 2022, 9 per cent cited mental health as their main reason for home education; in 2024, this was 14 per cent. Yet bullying remained static at 3 per cent. SEND provision only rose from 2 per cent to 3 per cent. The combined categories of no reason given, unknown, and ‘other’ (i.e. categories under which abuse could possibly be masked) actually dropped from 47 per cent in 2022 to 42 per cent in 2024.
Despite the overall leap in numbers then, the reasons cited for elective home education remain basically steady. In the 2024 figures, philosophical and lifestyle reasons make up the biggest bloc, a combined 23 per cent. Stereotypically, one assumes this means conservative Christian types, but religion (listed separately) is only cited by 1 per cent. Anecdotal evidence from the home education community strongly suggests that one is just as, if not more, likely to find liberal and progressive home educators. General school dissatisfaction accounts for 7 per cent. A host of other reasons, some already mentioned, make up percentage points here and there.
The rising home education figures, then, are not a simple story of child abuse hidden in plain sight. If there is one common theme, it is a growing dissatisfaction with state education on numerous levels. Yet our Labour government would have us believe otherwise.
The tragic cases of both Sara Sharif and the Pakistani rape gangs have been opportunistically used to accelerate something that Education Secretary Bridget Philipson was promising even before the election: the introduction of a ‘children not in school’ register. This looks inevitable now, with Labour’s cannily named Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, proposing such a register. The Bill passed its second Commons reading on 8 January.
It may yet fail in the Lords, but there is seemingly a backup plan: the Home School Education Registration and Support Bill, a Lords’ Private Members Bill put forward by the Lib Dem Lord Storey, currently at committee stage. Yet Sara Sharif’s murder and the rape gangs had nothing to do with farcical school withdrawals, and everything to do with evil abusers and authorities who already had all the knowledge and legal powers they needed.
What do the Tories have to say? Nil. The previous Conservative government also attempted to introduce a register in their 2022 Schools Bill. Started in the Lords, the Bill failed, but largely due to concerns about academy freedoms rather than principled qualms about parental rights. In fact, after its demise, then-Education Secretary Gillian Keegan asserted that such a register was still ‘definitely a priority’.
Make no mistake: were the Tories still in power, they would be using Sara Sharif’s death and the rape gangs in the same unconscionable way as Labour. Indeed, Tory opposition to Labour’s recent Bill consisted solely of playing politics over the rape gangs, without a mention of the thoroughly unconservative idea of a home education register. However it comes about, the policy will sail through to a deafening silence from the opposition benches.
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