Educating your child at home (elective home education)

Families who elect to home educate do so for a variety of reasons. The decision to home educate should not be taken lightly. It can be very rewarding to educate your child at home but it does require a serious time commitment, patience, energy and the ability to provide appropriate motivation, resources and equipment. You will need to decide if you have the skills and ability to educate your child or if you will need to purchase services to help you do this e.g. online learning packages or tutors. Please keep in mind there is no financial support available when you home educate. In addition, if your child receives free school meals or pupil premium support, this will not apply when home educated and will be lost. Furthermore, access to services schools buy in such as speech and language therapy, Education Psychology, CCT, SEMHL, alternative provisions via the city wide CAP programme including InspirED are not available to home educators. If you require these services to support your child we advise discussing home education with the school (if on roll at one) first.

From the start be sure you are doing what is right for your child. Discuss it with him/her and with the school, if your child is on roll at one. You could also speak to someone at the LA, ask for the Elective Home Education Coordinator who can talk you through what home education entails. Please initially email ehecoventry@coventry.gov.uk to set up a time to discuss it.

You must be able to provide the following:

• A suitable education 
• A full-time education 
• An efficient education

You will also need to consider the following as a part of planning for home education:

• Opportunities to socialise with other children and build friendships. This could be done through social activities or clubs based on your child's hobbies and interests.
• Space at home where learning can take place
• The time - parents who are in employment will have to determine if they can accommodate a full-time education as well as work commitments.
• What are your child's aspirations? Will your home education take steps towards achieving this?
• Does your child want to sit any examinations? This can be done but please keep in mind it can be costly as a private pupil.
• If you want to home educate, once you come off the roll of a school, your place will be allocated to someone on the waiting list. If you want to go back into schools you will need to apply through the admissions process. Please be aware, that there may not be places available at the school you apply for so you may not get the school of your choice.

You should not consider home education purely to avoid sending your child to school or to avoid exclusions or attendance fines. A suitable, full time and efficient education MUST be in place to continue to home educate.

Furthermore, being noted as home educated at the LA will NOT secure you a place at your preferred school any quicker if there are no spaces. Coventry City Council respect a parents decision to home educate and it is viewed as any educational 'setting' would be. The expectations are that if you deregister to home educate, you are in fact doing that to the standard required.