The National Curriculum and home education: the one-line answer and the nuance.

Do I legally have to follow the National Curriculum?

No. Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 (the law that makes home education lawful) requires a "suitable" education; it does not require the National Curriculum. The 2019 Department for Education guidance on Elective Home Education confirms the position in plain English: home-educated children are not required to follow the National Curriculum and LAs should not insist that they do.

Two common sources of confusion are worth clearing up now. First, the National Curriculum is only statutory in maintained state schools in England. Academies and free schools are not bound by it in the same way, and independent schools have never been. Home education, which is neither, is therefore not bound by it either. Second, the fact that the LA uses Key Stage language ("how is Y2 reading going?") does not mean that you have to.

What about any curriculum at all?

Also no, and this is where some parents get stuck. "Curriculum" tends to mean two different things in the same sentence. One meaning is "a pre-written scheme of work published by a company, school or charity". The other meaning is "the things your child is learning". The first is optional in home education. The second is what you are actually doing, whether you call it that or not.

If you want a pre-written curriculum, the UK market has plenty: Oak National, White Rose Maths, Conquer Maths, Singapore Maths, Read Write Inc, The Good and the Beautiful, Charlotte Mason curricula from various publishers, Montessori albums. They are tools. Use them if they fit your child; abandon them if they do not. None of them is required and none of them is better in principle.

If you do not want a pre-written curriculum, you can build a rhythm from first principles: reading, writing and maths as the spine; outings, projects and practical life around them; interests followed wherever they go. This is also lawful, also common and also suitable education within the meaning of Section 7.

What is the LA actually looking for?

Evidence that a child is learning, not a ringbinder of National Curriculum lesson plans.

In practice, the LA's EHE officer reads your reply and asks themselves: does this family know what their child is doing and why, and is it moving somewhere? That is a very different question from "do the lesson plans match the Year 3 curriculum map?" A description in your own voice, naming what your child has actually done, usually answers the real question better than any curriculum reference would.

The dedicated article on "suitable education" (linked below) has a one-page provision-statement template that most LAs accept at the first round. Notice how little of that template references the National Curriculum: almost none of it does.

How do I explain my approach to someone whose frame of reference is a Year 3 classroom?

One sentence about the approach, one sentence about what it looks like in a week, one sentence about the outcome you are seeing. That is the whole explanation, whether you are talking to an LA officer, a grandparent or a school friend at the gate.

For a broadly Montessori approach: "We work from hands-on concrete materials in the mornings (reading, writing, maths, practical life) and spend the afternoons on outings and interest-led projects. A typical week is three mornings at the kitchen table and two at a co-op or forest school. She is reading fluently at her age, is confident with addition and subtraction in the concrete and is deep into a long project on rivers at the moment."

For a classical or Charlotte Mason approach: swap in the specific methods (narration, copywork, nature notebooks, living books). For unschooling: swap in the child-led rhythm and describe what the child has actually done rather than what you have planned.

The person you are speaking to will sometimes push back with "but what about [the National Curriculum thing they are imagining]?" The honest answer, politely, is that home-educated children are not required to do that thing, that your child is still learning the skills underneath it and that you are happy to send a copy of your provision statement if they would like one.

What if I am worried my child is "behind"?

"Behind" is a year-group concept that does not translate well. The National Curriculum sets out what a child in a given year group is expected to cover; it is not a description of what every child of that age knows. Real year-3 classrooms contain children who are two years ahead and two years behind the stated expectations, in different subjects, at the same time.

Home-educated children develop in the shape their family and their interests allow. A child who spends a year deep in maths and relatively quiet on writing will, if the underlying attention is there, pick up the writing later when it becomes relevant (which it always does). The thing that matters over five or ten years is whether the child is learning, not whether they are matched to a national average on a given Friday.

If you are genuinely worried about a specific skill, you can address it specifically. The worry itself is not a sign that you are failing; it is a sign that you are paying attention.

A real family's approach

A mum we will call Fatima home-educates a Year 2 daughter and a Year 4 son. She has never bought a pre-written curriculum. Her rhythm is: mornings at the kitchen table (reading with each child in turn, shared maths from a cheap workbook, free writing); afternoons at a co-op on Mondays, forest school on Wednesdays, the library on Fridays and whatever the children ask for on Tuesdays and Thursdays (baking, a long walk, a museum).

When the LA asks, she writes half a page per child describing what they are doing, names what she is watching and attaches three specific recent examples. The LA has closed the file at the first round every year. Her daughter's reading age tracks a little above Year 2; her son's maths is a little above Year 4; neither child has ever seen a National Curriculum document and neither has been disadvantaged.

Fatima says her approach is not ideological: it is just a description of what works for her family. Plenty of families choose a more structured curriculum and report the same calm outcome. The point is that both are legal and both work.

This article is information, not legal advice. If the LA is insisting on National Curriculum delivery as a condition of satisfying Section 7, ring one of the helplines above.