What the law actually says about home education in England

You are not in a grey area. Home education in England sits inside a tight, well-trodden bit of law, and the bits that matter to you day to day are actually fewer than it looks. What follows is the whole framework in plain English: one statute, three sections, one famous case and a 2019 Department for Education guidance note. That is it.

What does the law actually say?

It says that a parent must cause their child to receive a suitable, full-time education, and that the education can be delivered at school or "otherwise". That is Section 7 of the Education Act 1996, and it is the single sentence on which every home-educating family in England relies.

Specifically, Section 7 reads: "The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable (a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and (b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise."

The "or otherwise" is the whole game. Parliament deliberately wrote the law to allow education at home. Home education is not tolerated, it is one of two equally legal routes. A head teacher, a councillor, a neighbour or a relative who tells you otherwise is simply wrong.

What the Act does not do is define "suitable". There is no statutory list of subjects, no required number of hours, no timetable, no curriculum, no exam requirement. "Suitable" is left to case law, which we come to in a moment.

What can the local authority actually make me do?

Less than most parents think, and less than some local authority (LA) officers imply. The two sections you need to know are 436A and 437.

Section 436A of the Education Act 1996 gives each LA a duty to make arrangements to identify children of compulsory school age in their area who are not receiving a suitable education, either at school or otherwise. That duty is the reason LAs write to home-educating families at all. It is a duty to identify, not a right to inspect. The 2016 amendment that added 436A did not create any new powers.

Section 437 gives the LA a power to serve a Notice to Satisfy on a parent "if it appears" that a child is not receiving a suitable education. You then have a minimum of fifteen days to provide information that satisfies the LA. If you do not, the LA can go on to make a School Attendance Order (SAO), naming a school the child must attend. SAOs are rare in practice, and almost always avoidable by a well-written reply to the original Notice.

The operational frame for all of this is the Department for Education's Elective Home Education: Departmental Guidance for Parents (April 2019). It is statutory guidance, which means the LA is legally required to take it into account when it decides what to do. The guidance confirms, in so many words, that LAs have no statutory right of entry to a home-educating family's home and no right to insist on meeting the child. They may ask. You may say no. Saying no is not, by itself, evidence that the education is unsuitable.

What an LA can ask, reasonably, is whether you are providing a suitable education, and for information that helps them form that view. What an LA cannot do is demand a particular format, require you to follow the National Curriculum, require lesson plans, require regular meetings, require termly reports or treat your decline as conclusive. If an officer's letter sounds as though they can, they are overstating their position.

What does "suitable" mean if the Act does not define it?

The working definition is set by case law, and specifically by Harrison and Harrison v Stevenson (1981). An education is suitable if it prepares the child for life in the community to which they belong and does not foreclose the reasonable options open to them when they grow up.

That is a deliberately wide test. It does not require your child's education to match any particular school, any particular age-group expectation or any particular philosophy. Montessori, Charlotte Mason, classical, structured, child-led, unschooling, eclectic: all of these are lawful shapes of "suitable" provided the test is met. The case has been cited in LA guidance and by the Department for Education ever since.

Two practical consequences follow. First, the LA cannot demand that your provision resembles school; suitability is about the child and the community, not about institutional resemblance. Second, you cannot be found unsuitable for choosing one valid educational philosophy over another; you can only be found unsuitable if, on the evidence, your child is not getting a suitable education in the sense the case describes.

What about the Children Not in School register?

Registration duties for children educated at home sit in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2025. As at the last review date on this article, not all provisions are in force; the Department for Education has published implementation guidance on a rolling basis, and the exact dataset councils may require, the registration deadline and the consequences of non-registration are still being worked through.

This is the part of the article that changes fastest, and it is flagged in our review cadence for quarterly re-checking. Before you act on anything in this section, check the most recent DfE guidance page on GOV.UK, linked at the bottom, and consider ringing Education Otherwise for the current position on your particular council.

The general frame is that the register is intended to help LAs identify children not receiving a suitable education, in line with Section 436A. The register itself does not change the test for suitability, and it does not change the fact that LAs have no power of entry.

A real LA interaction

A mum we will call Rowan deregistered her six-year-old son in September. The LA wrote in mid-October with a standard informal enquiry: a one-page letter asking about her educational provision, the approach she was taking and her son's progress. It did not quote Section 437. It was a Section 436A letter in polite language.

Rowan replied three weeks later in plain English: a one-page "educational philosophy" describing a Montessori-inspired approach, a paragraph on her son's reading, a paragraph on maths and practical life, a paragraph on outings and the local home-education group and a short line inviting written follow-up rather than a home visit. She did not send a timetable, a curriculum or samples of work.

The LA wrote back in December. They thanked her, said they were satisfied with the provision and closed the case subject to an informal annual review. Rowan marked the date in her calendar. Nothing further happened that academic year.

This is roughly the median interaction in England. Most LAs are reasonable. Most cases close at the first round of correspondence. The edge cases (bad-faith officers, pre-existing social-work involvement, EHCP complications) are where help lines exist.

This article is information, not legal advice. If a Section 437 Notice, a School Attendance Order, a social worker or a special-school EHCP is part of your situation, ring one of the helplines above or contact a solicitor.