Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of access to curricular resources for home-educated children.

The Government supports the right for parents to choose to home educate their children. By electing to home educate, parents or guardians also accept full responsibility for their child’s education, including any costs associated with their education and exams.

Some Local Authorities may provide assistance to home educating families, including for public examinations, but this is at their discretion.

The Department has begun a voluntary, termly collection of data from Local Authorities on elective home education, including details of the types of support Local Authorities are able to offer families. Our existing guidance for Local Authorities on home education sets out examples of the types of additional support authorities can offer. The guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/elective-home-education.

The Department knows that many Local Authorities offer help in accessing free or discounted resources and facilities for home educating families, such as signposting to local groups and library schemes, as well as to curriculum resources. Through continuing data analysis, the Department will build a better understanding of the support offered, problems faced in accessing support and where more assistance should be targeted.

As part of its commitment to introducing statutory Local Authority registers for children not in school, the Department also remains committed to introducing a new duty on Local Authorities to provide support to home educating families, should they want it. This could, in theory, include examination support, as well as supporting parents to access curriculum resources. The Department will legislate for these Children Not in School measures at a suitable future opportunity to help Local Authorities to ensure that all children in their areas are receiving an appropriate education, regardless of where they are educated.