Home education register UK: what changes in England and when

126,000. That is how many kids were being home educated in England on census day in autumn 2025, up from 111,700 a year earlier (DfE, January 2026). On 29 April 2026 the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 received Royal Assent, and the home education register UK parents have argued about for a decade became law. What it has not become yet is reality. This post sets out what changes, what nobody knows yet, and what a family or a municipality in Denmark can take from it.

What the Act actually requires

Every local authority in England must keep a register of children not in school. That covers kids who are not registered at any school, kids who are registered but educated elsewhere for part of the week, and kids who attend a further education college only part time (Browne Jacobson, June 2026).

Parents must give the council information within 15 days of the child becoming eligible for the register, and within 15 days of any change. The information includes the child's and the parents' details, who provides the education and for how much time, any other providers, and how much of the education happens without a parent involved. If a parent does not supply it, the council can serve a preliminary notice, and that notice can end in a school attendance order.

The second change is consent. Parents of a child at a special school, and parents of a child who is or has been the subject of local authority child protection enquiries or action in the past five years, will need the council's consent before withdrawing the child for home education (DfE letter to local authorities, 30 April 2026). The council can refuse if it judges that regular school attendance is in the child's best interests, or that the planned home education is not adequate. Withdrawing without consent becomes an offence.

Less noticed: councils will have a duty to give advice and information to the parents of every child on their register. For families who left because nothing else was offered, that duty may matter more than the register.

Home education register UK timeline: not before 2027, and no date yet

The Department for Education wrote to every local authority the day after Royal Assent. The letter says the measures "are not yet in force and implementation will not be immediate", and that councils should keep following the 2019 guidance until told otherwise (DfE, 30 April 2026). Draft statutory guidance and the content of the regulations go out to consultation first, and the consultation also feeds the funding councils will get for the new work.

At the time of writing, 9 October 2026, we could not find a published commencement date. Home education groups expect 2027 at the earliest. Wales is covered by the same Act but sets its own timetable.

The law is passed. The register is not.

What evidence of learning will councils ask for?

The register itself asks about time and people, not quality: who teaches, how many hours, which providers. The quality question stays where it has been since 1996, in the parent's duty to provide an efficient, full-time education suitable to the child's age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs. The 2019 guidance that the DfE letter confirms is still current lets a council make informal enquiries about that. It does not set hours, and it does not require the curriculum that schools use.

In practice, the councils that work well with families ask for three things: a short description of the approach, dated samples of work, and a conversation. When I taught in Denmark's public schools, the kids who came back from a period at home did best when someone had kept a plain record of what they had actually done, week by week. Not a portfolio for an inspector. A list for the next teacher.

One more number belongs here. Where a council recorded a primary reason for home education, mental health was the most common one at 16 percent, ahead of philosophical or preferential reasons at 12 percent, and for almost three in ten kids the reason was unknown or not given (DfE, January 2026). We talk about home education as if it were a lifestyle choice. For a large share of these kids it is the exit from a school that stopped working for them. A register will count them. It will not teach them.

A register tells a council where a child is. It does not tell anyone what the child learned on Tuesday.

Denmark has had notification and supervision for 170 years

The Danish constitution, section 76, lets parents teach their kids at home as long as the teaching matches what is generally required in the Danish public school. No reason has to be given, and the municipality, not the state, supervises the teaching (Danish Ministry of Children and Education, March 2025). Parents notify the municipality in writing before they start. The district school can hold tests each year in Danish, mathematics and English, and if the teaching is found lacking twice, three months apart, the child must go to a school.

The numbers still rose. At the start of the 2025/26 school year, 90 municipalities reported 2,560 kids in home education, about six times the roughly 443 counted in a study for the ministry ten years earlier (Folkeskolen, September 2025). Seven in ten municipalities hand the supervision to the district school.

Norway is stricter on paper. Parents must notify the municipality, the municipality must start supervision within three months, regular tests check progress against the curriculum, and a municipality that finds the teaching does not match public school can order the child into school (Bærum municipality, updated June 2025).

I think the Nordic experience carries a simple lesson for England. Notification plus supervision does not stop families from choosing home education, and it does not by itself make the education good. What makes it good is an adult with a plan, a record, and a way to stay close to what the child's class is doing, so the door back to school stays open.

• The register changes what parents in England must report, not what their kids must learn. The learning standard from 1996 stays.
• Nothing is in force yet. Councils follow the 2019 guidance until the DfE writes again, and 2027 is the earliest realistic start.
• Denmark and Norway have had notification and municipal supervision for years. The numbers rose anyway. The quality of a home education still comes down to the adult and the plan.

What a parent can do this week

1. Write one line per subject on what your child is working on this week. About 20 minutes once, then 5 minutes a week. This is the document a council, a future teacher and you will all want.

2. Keep dated samples. A photo of a page, a short voice note from your child explaining something, a finished worksheet. One folder, one date on each.

3. Match two or three topics a term to what a class at your child's grade would be doing. Not all of it. Enough that a return to school, if it comes, is not a cliff.

4. If your council makes an informal enquiry, answer with the plan and the samples. A plan ends most enquiries faster than a dispute does.

5. Watch for the DfE consultation on the regulations and respond to it. The rules on what parents must report are being written now, and the people writing them read the responses.

Where GradeAid fits

GradeAid is a Danish platform for teachers. The teacher types in the topic and the level and gets a lesson plan, a worksheet, a quiz, a presentation and screen-free activities in seconds, which you can also differentiate. The material can be printed. Homeschooling parents use it the same way. GradeAid does not produce a register submission and does not give legal advice, and about 47.6 percent of worksheets get edited after generation (our own data, September 2026), so the adult still reads before the child does.

If you work with home-educating families, in England or in a Danish municipality, we would like to hear from you. Write to us at founders@gradeaid.ai.