Proposed changes to home education law – without the legal jargon

Written 29/1/26

Most of you will have heard of the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, or heard talk of changes to home education law, but you may also have heard lots of political jargon, reference numbers and language that is not easy to understand. So, here is our take, without the complicated language of how the proposed changes will affect home education. Remember these are not in effect yet and there is still time to contact your MP and ask them not to support the bill. The bill will finish in the Lords shortly and will move back to parliament, be voted in and then given royal assent. It could happen as early as Easter.

The bill itself is damaging, and we are very concerned at how it will be misused as this is what we already fight everyday, this bill allows the worst LAs to massively overstep and make up their own interpretations, it also puts pressure on the few good LAs to be more involved than they tell us they are comfortable with, it also takes their time away from families that want and need their support.

The bill will result in children being denied the opportunity to be home educated, forcing them to stay in a harmful school. Decisions will be made by the LA on what is right for the child regardless of the parent and child’s opinion. Decisions about what is best for a home ed kid will be decided by people who have no training or experience, or knowledge of your child, and the ability to fight the bad LAs will come at a greater risk to the parent.

The below is a very simplified version, as well as how we think LAs will behave.

England and Wales only.

You will deregister as normal (with our dereg template letter).

If you have had social work involvement at child protection level in the last 5 years you will need consent from the LA to deregister. This decision could be made by the EHE team who do not understand the past case, or could be SS who have no understanding of home education. This is an extra step for many families that is unnecessary such as those with adopted children who had to be part of the system until adopted, or children where concerns are resolved and not going to reoccur, or where school was the harmful factor etc. Children must remain in school until consent is given REGARDLESS of if the parent is deregistering to protect from a factor in school.

This rule will result in schools and ex’s causing malicious harm by doing a referral to SS to prevent deregistration from happening. It happens often enough now, we see it increasing. The bill allows these malicious referrals even after starting home education to become a valid reason for enforcing more rules and home visits.

A pilot/trial scheme will happen in 30% of England and 30% of Wales LAs. There will be a mandatory meeting with the LA upon deregistration, this is a 2-5 year trial and is likely to be rolled out eventually to all LAs. Someone (yet to be determined, but probably EHE) will contact you with a meeting date, however there is no timescale on this meeting, which could see LAs purposely delay, or delay due to a shortage of staff, either way children are put at risk.

There is no rule on where this meeting should take place, we imagine bad LAs will make it sound like it must be in the home. The child must be present. Exceptional circumstances would not require the child to be present, but regardless of age, mental state, or the harm forcing them to meet a stranger could do we imagine many LAs will claim the reason is not exceptional.

The school should be present if the parent requests them to be -though this is worded cleverly and we expect not allowing school to be present would be used as a concern against you.

The meeting is allegedly to check why you want to home educate, make sure you know your options ie can they help fix an issue with school, to tell you your legal duty (which bad LAs will make out is to follow the curriculum and have a timetable etc) and theirs (which they will claim a load of rubbish, we expect new EHE guidance which will be released after the bill is finalised will change the EHE roll). The meeting is not about getting consent. But the child must attend school until the LA confirm the meeting has happened. We are also concerned that during this meeting anything you say could be used immediately or at any point as a reason/contribute to SAO proceedings.

If you’re not in one of the 30% of LAs that are part of the trial and have no SS involvement then you can dereg as normal.

Special school dereg: the process to deregister is similar in that consent is required, however the LA can refuse even if you have amazing education provision and SEN will be met, they can decide it is in the best interests of the child to be in school. This means someone with no experience of your child’s specific needs, or knowledge of home education can decide what is best for your child.

HOWEVER any situation where consent is required and refused by the LA, a request can NOT be put in again within 6 months!!! regardless of the situation or child’s safety in school.

The stuff that will affect everyone:

Every home educator will then be on a register, which already seems like you are guilty, you must then provide info annually or more often (LAs will be allowed to ask up to 4 times a year) this includes your details, the details of the other parent including address, details of other adults who are involved in the child’s education, details of groups/services/sessions/resources etc that provide education to your child over a number of hours (to be determined), and whatever else the LA asks for.

Within 15 days of dereg/going on the register the LA must consider where the child lives, we expect this will mean bad LAs demand a home visit, and could then cause all sorts of harm. This info will be stored in the register regardless of how honest it was.

Remember, none of this is about the suitability of the home education, this is about control and allegedly safeguarding. The actual education will be discussed in the EHE guidance which we hold out little hope of it being positive. The EHE guidance is likely to include visits to discuss the suitability of the education.

There appears to be no safeguards on preventing abusive ex partners access to information, no protections for children being harmed in school, or previously harmed by ‘professionals’. The bill is very much about assuming guilt and forcing you and your child to prove everything is ok, regularly!

You will be required to provide an estimate of the time spent with other people and receiving an education, this could very well lead to misunderstandings and confusion, especially for those who do not have a set time table or follow a formal style of learning.

If your child is a carer this will also be recorded, which could lead to questioning on how the parent can home educate if they are disabled for example, more work and hoops for the disabled!

The details and update requests for the register could well be carried out separately to enquiries about the suitability of the education. Meaning more work for the LA and the parent.

Responses to requests to update the register must be received within 15 days or further action can be taken, this is unrealistic especially for those that travel regularly.

Information required from others could result in tutors, organisations and groups refusing access to home educators, or a higher cost for the service.

Failure to comply results in legal action, fines and ultimately prison in some situations.

Twice yearly forums are to be offered by the LA – sounds interesting initially, but we know how this will go, the letter will make it sound compulsory to attend, at the event the LA will use the time to get information from you that you otherwise wouldn’t share, things that we know an LA can and will use against you due to misunderstanding how home education actually works. They could use these events to instill fear and misunderstanding around what you do and don’t have to do. The better LAs are likely to make these informative but those LAs find they do not have the staffing to do the helpful things they want to do.

If concerns become known about the education, the process is set to change, you will be served a preliminary notice initially, as part of this the LA can demand access to your home, refusal is likely to be used against you, we know the worst LAs will serve these notices on families who choose not to meet them during informal enquiries. Our recent research found many LAs already misusing their powers to demand whatever they want.

The process of SAO will then continue but is heavily skewed towards doing whatever the LA demands.

The consequences of fighting an SAO and losing will be higher, with bigger fines and prison, therefore making home educators less likely to fight even if they did nothing wrong.

Currently unknown home educators will be required to register with the LA, however, prosecution can only happen if they ask you to register and you refuse, meaning you could stay unknown without consequence. Though the chances of staying unknown are limited due to a linking of all services and data sharing.

If you wish to (please do) write to your MP, you can use the above info, or anything from our previous posts, remember the current published bill (29/1/26 does not include the amendments which we discussed in the previous blog post).

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