Elective Home Education

Establish and maintain contact with families educating their children at home.

The aim of the Elective Home Education team is to establish and maintain contact with families educating their children at home and to offer parents appropriate advice and support in the best interests of their children. Guidance is also provided for headteachers on what to do if a parent of a child on their school roll opts to home educate.

Headteachers' duty

If a parent of a child on a school roll opts to home educate they must confirm in writing, in the form of dated letter or email to the headteacher, that they wish to remove their child’s name from the register because the child is to be educated other than at school. However, if a child is on a special school roll parents must seek approval from the Local Authority Special Educational Needs team first.

The headteacher should offer a meeting with parents before removing a child from the school roll. The meeting should explore the parents’ reasons for taking the decision to home educate and address any worries that prompted this decision. 

An Elective Home Education Officer from Oxfordshire County Council can be invited to the meeting. The EHE Officer will want to ensure the parents are making the decision to home educate for positive reasons and that the parents can meet the demands of home education. 

Schools must not take a pupil off roll until the parents’ letter is received.

If a child is registered at a school as a result of a school attendance order the parents must get the order revoked by the Local Authority on the grounds that arrangements have been made for the child to receive suitable education otherwise than at school, before the child can be deleted from the school's register and educated at home.

Schools must also create a Common Transfer File for the pupil and post it on the s2s website where the file will be stored in the Lost Pupil Database section of s2s.

The EHE Team will request a School Exit Form (docx format, 83 KB) and a copy of the letter from the parent advising that their child be removed from roll for home education be sent to ehe@oxfordshire.gov.uk

For further information regarding home education read the web page on gov.uk or contact the EHE Team on 01865 328 214.

Guidance and further information

The following is guidance for parents and guardians who are considering educating (or are already educating) their child outside the school system.

DfE guidelines