Few countries in the world have seen such a surge in homeschooling as the UK.
The number of children deregistered from school and in Elective Home Education (EHE) in England increased by 55.7 per cent, from 80,900 to 126,000 between 2022 and 2025 according to census data – a steeper rate than anywhere else in Europe. The most common reason reported was mental health.
Many parents opting for home education say they had little choice about it. More and more children are refusing to go to school, with persistent absence continuing to rise.
Dr Dan O’Hare, educational psychologist and senior lecturer at University of Bristol, points to several factors driving the rise in both school absence, and home-education in Britain: a developmentally inappropriate curriculum “where children of four are being asked to do the same that 10 years ago we’d have asked of six year olds”; high levels of assessment; the legacy of the pandemic; the SEND crisis (there is an over-representation of children with Special Educational Needs among both the home-educated population); authoritarian behaviour policies in response to absence; the significant waiting lists for mental health support from CAMHS; poverty; and really stressed, pressurised school systems. “Teachers are leaving in droves and are not able to recruit more,” he says. “That adds so much pressure on a school.”
But many experts say that, regardless of the reasons, the rise in home education is troubling. Sir Martyn Oliver, chief inspector for Ofsted, has warned that it is bad for children’s social skills. Donna Wiggett of the Association of Educational Psychologists tells The i Paper that rather than improving the child’s mental health, homeschooling can end up entrenching their anxiety.
“Elective Home Education will have a negative impact if it’s not done well. That’s not to say the child of every parent who’s home-educating is at a detriment… but if you’re in isolation all the time, the long-term outcomes in terms of your health, your mental wellbeing and your contributions to society are limited, aren’t they?”
Melissa Powenski, a psychotherapist and mental health nurse, echoes this worry. “A young person who can not tolerate an environment they did not choose will not be able to sit with discomfort and learn that they can survive,” she says. “Instead, they will avoid and limit their later life choices because they believe the world is not for them.”
‘Home-schooling is fashionable, but teaching requires knowledge and experience’
Home education has become something of a trend – with influencers such as Molly-Mae Hague recently saying she worries her three-year-old daughter would “lose” her “spark and brightness” if put in a school. Another Love Island alum, Olivia Bowen, has said she is considering it for the “different lifestyle” they can have abroad.
But Ms Powenski says this can skew the reality: “The normalising of homeschooling by celebrities does have an impact on how ordinary people view school – but it’s worth being clear about what celebrities like Molly-Mae would actually be doing. They’re not homeschooling in the traditional sense. They’re paying for private tutors, specialist classes, clubs and a wealth of educational opportunities that most families simply can’t access.”
She adds that many parents, even with the best intentions, are simply not equipped for home education: “Teaching is a skilled profession. It requires knowledge, patience and experience to deliver a curriculum to 20 or 30 children. A parent without those tools cannot be expected to replicate that – and for a parent who didn’t get through their own GCSEs, being encouraged to homeschool raises serious questions about how their child will thrive academically.”
‘I was dragging my son to school – his teachers told me he cried all day’
Kathleen Cornmell, 56, says this was not her experience. She took her eldest son out of school when he was eight, and subsequently home educated all three of her children.
“I think this is the worry for people who know very little about home education: that it will make them more socially isolated and dependent on you,” says Cornmell, who lives with her husband and two of her children in Hampshire. “But when done well and with the child, it can better equip them for adult life.”
Her son struggled with school from the moment he started reception. “He was so distraught and my day was so stressful: I would be dragging him out of bed daily, fighting with him to get dressed as he undressed, literally carrying him through the door. He was so upset about the brutalness of it.” The rigidity and expectations, without extra support, led to him crying under the table for an entire day – something Cornmell only learned later.
After taking him to school for about a year (“it was horrific every day”) she went to her GP to manage her own depression. “And they were the ones who said, why don’t we just take him out of school?”
They tried different schools, including a Steiner school they ultimately couldn’t afford, before deciding to try home education – with Cornmell leaving her job as a telecoms engineer. It was not a decision she took lightly. “There were many, many sleepless nights of worrying how it would all turn out – but all you can do at the time is what you feel in your heart is right.”
She devised a learning plan that was driven by the children’s interests rather than the traditional curriculum. She sought out group classes for other home educating families – she and her husband, with their engineering backgrounds, ran a Lego Robotics team for her kids and others.
The difference, she says, “was like night and day. It felt like I had him back to the way he was every weekend. The happy child rather than one full of dread”.
All of her children did their GCSEs before joining college for A-levels. Both her sons went to university and her daughter, who is currently at college, also plans to go.
Cornmell. suspects her son is neurodivergent but never got him assessed: “Once he was homeschooled, it didn’t feel like it was necessary as it was only a problem in the school setting.” She says he thrived at home. “He became incredibly good at sports, he became incredibly good at music and went on to do a music degree. He’s very clever, but in the school system, when you’ve got up to 30 children in a class with all those individual interests, it’s very hard for a child like that to fit in.”
Unlike her eldest, her other children did not seem to have any special education needs, but as a family they decided the benefits of home education outweighed any benefits of traditional schooling: “They’ve all done very well and I think they’re all very rounded individuals.”
While she has no regrets, she says it has been incredibly challenging – and financially it has brusied them. “We haven’t been able to pay off our mortgage, which we would have hoped to have done by this point. We were hoping to have retired soon but we won’t be able to. We’re having to downsize,” says Cornmell, now a nutrtionist.
She also emphasises that keeping her children as socially engaged as possible was a constant effort. “Social isolation really wasn’t an issue – only because I put in a lot of effort. Those friends weren’t available around the corner like they would be if you were in school, so there was lots of driving and lots of messaging.”
‘We must stop blaming parents and repair their relationship with school’
Part of what troubles critics of the rise in home education is that the UK currently have some of the most lax laws around home education in the continent. English common law has always recognised parents as having a natural and legal authority over children, including education. By contrast, homeschooling in Germany and Sweden is illegal, and is effectively illegal in the Netherlands and Spain. This means that in the UK, all it takes is a formal notice of deregistration to the headteacher of the child’s school, which can happen without notice. (For children with special school places or under School Attendance Order, they will also require consent from their Local Authority.)
But that is set to change, with The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill passing through Parliament. The law will introduce a register of children in home education. Parents will no longer have the automatic right to home educate if the child is under a child protection plan, and local authorities will have far more power to intervene if they deem the home environment unsuitable.
Proponents view it as a safeguard against hidden abuse. But some worry the move will further shift blame onto parents rather than addressing failures from schools and local authorities. The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, tells The i Paper: “This greater visibility must be matched with meaningful support.
“Monitoring children’s whereabouts alone will not solve the root causes driving children out of the classroom. We need a system that provides effective early support to keep children engaged in education – no child should feel the only way to cope is to disappear from the school system altogether.”
The solution, experts argue, boils down to all authorities (schools, councils, mental health services) working with families and intervening before school avoidance becomes entrenched.
While many of these require additional funding, there are also solutions that are not financial.
Dr O’Hare says that schools’ attitudes to non-attendance – with fines for parents increasing – is only making things worse. “Punitive approaches are a choice and research demonstrates that fining and so on doesn’t work. It’s completely ineffective and undermines the home/school relationship. The blame-based narratives in this country aren’t helping.
“That completely disempowers parents and destroys the home-school relationship. If a parent gets a whiff of that judgement from school, how do you come back from that?”