Which years have the highest movement into home education?

And what are the impacts for a move in Year 10 or 11?

One more statistic to add to my previous look at the DfE Elective Home Education (EHE) data release.

A quick reminder - the DfE have recently begun collecting data from Local Authorities relating to the EHE children in their area, which you can find here. They collect a range of information, not all of which has been published. The two main releases so far are

• information across the whole year, which is currently only available for 21-22, and

• information collected at termly census points, available for October, January, and May for the academic year 22-23.

This is information collected by LAs about EHE children that they know about. It isn’t currently legally required for parents to notify LAs that they are home educating, or for LAs to report any particular information up to the DfE, so this data isn’t 100% complete. However LAs are legally required to be notified about any deregistrations, and have a duty to identify any children in their area who are not receiving a suitable education; through which they pick up the majority of children who either never started school in the first place, or moved into the area following deregistration somewhere else. It’s always difficult to tell how many are not included in these figures, but UK-wide informal surveys and reports among home educating parents suggest that well over 80% of all home educating parents will be included; it’s likely this is higher in England, which has been moving towards a higher level of tracking for some time.

Also, not all LAs reported their information to the DfE, although around 95% did. So these national figures have been adjusted by the DfE to estimate the population in the small number of LAs that didn’t return figures. There’s also a bit of rounding involved, which again comes from the DfE figures. Therefore, you can’t consider these numbers to be accurate to the individual child. But they will be pretty close.

With all that said, it’s the termly census points I’m looking at here. This graph shows the overall population change between the October and January census points (Spring, in red), and the January and May census points (Summer, in blue); broken down by year group. I’ve only started at Year 1 as children move into Compulsory School Age at different points through Reception which throws off those figures. There’s lots of evidence to show quite a high rate of movement between school and home education in both directions, so this is just the net result. A rate of zero doesn’t necessarily mean no child in that year deregistered, or moved back into school - it just means those numbers balanced out.

Some key points to note.

• There’s a significant net movement into home education across the year. This is an expected pattern, as children move into home education throughout CSA (compulsory school age). The overall population won’t increase by that much, as the Year 11’s will no longer be counted by the Autumn census, and a slow growth will occur again over the year. So an in-year increase doesn’t necessarily translate into a year-on-year increase. That said, both the global and ongoing national trends suggest that there will also be a yearly increase. We’ll have to wait for the next set of figures to find out.

• There’s also a higher move into home education going into the Summer term compared to the Spring term, for all years except year 11. This could be a general seasonal pattern, or it could be indicative of an overall growing trend (or a bit of both). Again we’ll need the next set of figures to find out.

• Year 11 is the only one to buck this trend - with fewer deregistrations between January and May. This is not particularly surprising as deregistration at this point makes it almost impossible to sit any exams that year, and it is close enough to the end of compulsory education that most children can see it out one way or another. It is only the very desperate that deregister at this point.

• Deregistrations from secondary are far higher than in primary, and increase over the secondary years.

• Year 1 and Year 6 are the peaks for primary deregistration, with the middle years of primary static between October and January. Seems Christmas time at primary is worth staying for!

With my particular exams focus on, the thousands of deregistrations towards the end of Year 10 and into Year 11 are a worry. Not all of those children will want to take GCSEs - for some stepping away from them is part of the aim of deregistering - but a lot would like to continue with at least a minimum set of subjects to get them into the post-16 option they’re looking at.

Sitting exams as a home educator is perfectly possible - but it can be costly, and for some key subjects it requires taking different specifications from the GCSE boards they’ve been studying towards in school. If you know this early you can save up, stagger exam sittings, and work towards the right specs. Pivoting to this in the middle of a crisis point at the end of Year 10 is…. not so easy.

Two things could help in this situation.

The first is a network of local, affordable exam centres able to support the full range of access arrangements and the specifications that actually work for home educators. This would probably take some funding and a requirement on LAs (or potentially schools) to offer support for private candidates, but it would be doable, and for significantly less money than funding children for a state education. This would also benefit students in EOTAS or AP (who face many of the same issues), adult learners, schooled children wanting to take subjects not offered at their school, and those resitting qualifications. Essentially it’s a social good akin to a leisure centre or a library - a facility for locals to use as they see fit. It is easier than ever to learn the content for qualifications in a variety of ways - it’s just the certification that is still more difficult than it needs to be.

The second is a commitment from the DfE to review the GCSE offer to make it workable for those outside of a stable mainstream education, which would make that transition a lot easier. Sometimes this would be quite straightforward, in other areas it would need more careful thinking about. But unless someone tries it will never happen.

Ultimately the reasons people have for choosing home education are many and varied, and I've considered some in the other post (there will be more to come!). But whatever their reasons, children will all end up in the same post-16 world, and need access to the same qualifications. Which ones they choose will depend on their circumstances - but unless exam centre availability matches demand, that isn’t a free choice.