School refusal and home education: your child stopped going to school, here is what to do next.

This article reflects the law in England. Wales follows the same statutory backbone with minor terminology differences; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own home education frameworks. If you are not in England, the high-level shape (deregistration stops attendance enforcement; the local authority's role differs after deregistration) still applies, but check the devolved-nation section in our home education law article for specifics.

Right now, do this

School refusal is a welfare situation, not truancy, and deregistering your child stops the attendance clock and removes the threat of prosecution. You do not need the school's agreement to deregister.

If writing to the school feels unsafe for any reason, for example because there is a safeguarding concern, a domestic situation where another adult might intercept the letter, or because the school has been hostile, read the red flags section at the bottom of this page first.

You are not failing

If you are considering school refusal home education in the UK, you are not doing anything wrong.

You are reading this because your child cannot go to school. Maybe they cry, maybe they freeze, maybe they are physically sick in the mornings. Maybe you have been carrying them through the door for weeks, or maybe you stopped trying because it was hurting both of you.

School refusal is not truancy. It is not laziness, and it is not your fault. Truancy is a child skipping school without a parent knowing. What is happening in your house is a child in distress, and a parent trying to work out what to do next.

Those are very different things, and the law recognises the difference.

You have not broken any law by keeping your child at home while you figure this out. You are allowed to deregister. Thousands of UK families do exactly this every year, and many of them start in the same place you are right now.

What happens with attendance letters during school refusal?

While your child is still on the school roll, the school has a duty to record attendance. After a certain number of absences, the local authority (LA) can step in.

Here is the typical enforcement timeline, so the fear has a real shape rather than a nameless one.

The escalation path

1. Attendance drops. The school logs unauthorised absences and may contact you or refer to the SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator, the teacher responsible for SEN support in the school).
2. Warning letter. The LA sends a formal warning that attendance must improve.
3. Fixed penalty notice (FPN). Under s.444A of the Education Act 1996 (the attendance offence provision), the LA can issue a fine. Subject to current penalty rates, this is currently around £80 if paid within 21 days, rising to £160 within 28 days.
4. Prosecution referral. If the FPN is unpaid, the LA can refer the case to the magistrates' court under s.444 (the section that makes it an offence to fail to secure regular attendance). Fines can reach £2,500. Custodial sentences exist in theory but are extremely rarely imposed.

The critical point: once you formally deregister your child, s.444 no longer applies. The attendance duty ends. No more penalty notices. No prosecution referral. The clock stops.

If you are a single parent managing this alone, or if the other parent is not involved in the decision, none of this changes. The letter to the head teacher comes from you, and one parent's signature is sufficient. Home education after school refusal is more common than most people realise, and the formal term in the UK is elective home education (EHE, the name the local authority uses for families educating outside the school system).

How do I actually deregister?

The process below applies in England. The right to home educate exists across the UK; for the full legal framework, see our home education UK overview. The procedure differs slightly in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; if you are in one of those nations, check our dedicated nation guides for the specific steps.

You write to the head teacher. The letter does not need to be long or formal. It states that you are withdrawing your child from the school to provide education at home under s.7 of the Education Act 1996 (the section that establishes a parent's right to educate "at school or otherwise").

The school must remove your child from the roll. They cannot refuse, delay, or require a meeting first. In practice, some schools do try to arrange meetings or talk you out of it. You are not obliged to attend.

The one exception

If your child attends a special school and has an EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan, the legal document that sets out a child's special educational needs and the provision to meet them), you may need consent from the local authority before deregistration. This is a different process. If this applies to you, read our article on deregistering from a special school with an EHCP.

If you are already de facto home educating

Many families reading this have a child who has been at home for weeks already. The school may still have them on the roll. Until you send the deregistration letter, the attendance clock is still ticking and the school is still logging absences. Sending the letter formalises what is already happening and stops the enforcement timeline.

If shift work, caring responsibilities, or simply the weight of the last few weeks have meant you have not yet written the letter, that is understandable. But doing it soon protects you.

What happens to a SEND assessment if I deregister?

This is one of the most common fears, and the answer matters.

If your child has a SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) assessment already in progress, or if you have requested an EHC needs assessment (the formal process that decides whether a child gets an EHCP), deregistering does not automatically pause or cancel it. The LA's duty to assess under the Children and Families Act 2014 applies whether the child is in school or educated at home.

In practice, some local authorities do try to close or stall an assessment when a child leaves the school roll. If this happens, challenge it in writing and contact IPSEA (the charity that provides free legally-based advice on SEND) for support.

If you have been waiting for the school to "sort things out" via the SENCO, and that is one of the reasons you have stayed on the roll, know that deregistering does not remove your child's right to an assessment. You can pursue it independently.

What about deschooling?

Your child did not leave school because they got bored of it. They left because it was harming them. The recovery from that is real, and it takes time.

The common rule of thumb is one month of deschooling (the adjustment period after leaving school, where no formal learning is expected) for every year of school. For children who left because of distress, that timeline is often longer, and that is completely normal.

During deschooling, your child may sleep a lot, play obsessively, seem to do "nothing", or cycle between relief and anger. This is not regression. This is recovery.

You do not need to fill the gap with a timetable or a purchased curriculum. Reading together, cooking, walking, being bored in a safe house: these are enough for now.

If you are working shifts, or if your household cannot afford to treat deschooling as a quiet sabbatical, that is fine too. Deschooling is not a middle-class wellness retreat. It is your child learning to feel safe again, and that happens around real life, not instead of it.

A real family's first month (worked example)

Adeel is eight. He lives with his mum, Priya, in a terrace in Bradford. Priya works three days a week as a hospital porter. Adeel had been refusing school since Year 2, most mornings ending with him curled up behind the sofa, unable to speak.

The school suggested anxiety workshops. The GP referred for an autism assessment, which had been waiting five months with no date.

Priya kept him home for three weeks before she found out she could deregister. She was terrified of the attendance letters, which mentioned a penalty notice. She wrote the deregistration letter on a Wednesday evening after her shift, emailed it to the head teacher, and printed a copy for her folder.

The school rang the next day asking her to come in for a meeting. She replied by email that her decision was final and asked for written confirmation of removal from the roll. It arrived within the week.

She contacted the LA in writing to confirm the autism assessment should continue. They tried to suggest it would need to be "re-referred", but after Priya emailed IPSEA's template letter, the assessment stayed on track.

For the first month, Adeel mostly built with LEGO, watched nature documentaries, and helped Priya cook on her days off. She did not buy a curriculum. She did not set up a classroom.

On the days she worked, Adeel stayed with his nana, who let him read and draw. By week five, he started asking questions again, pointing at things in books, narrating what he was building.

Priya still does not have a timetable. She has a child who can eat breakfast without crying.