England · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026
The Children Not in School register, in plain English
The Act received Royal Assent in April 2026 and requires every local authority in England to keep a register of children who are not registered at a school. It is expected to come into force around 2027. Here is what that means for a home-educating family, what your local authority is likely to ask for, and how to have the answers written down before anyone asks.
Please read this first
- This is general information, not legal advice. We are a software company, not solicitors, and nothing here should be relied on as a statement of your legal position.
- A great deal of the detail is not settled yet. Much of how the register will actually work depends on secondary legislation and statutory guidance that follow the Act. Timings, the exact information required and the process for providing it may all change before it goes live.
- Check the official sources. Start with GOV.UK and with your own local authority, whose practice varies considerably. Where this page and an official source disagree, the official source is right.
- These provisions apply in England. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements for elective home education.
April 2026
when the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 received Royal Assent
~2027
when the Children Not in School register is expected to go live
15 days
the expected window to give your local authority the required information after deregistering
~126,000
children recorded in elective home education in England on the autumn 2025 census day
The law
What the Act actually does
The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 is a wide-ranging piece of legislation covering much more than home education. The part that matters to home-educating families is the requirement for every local authority in England to maintain a register of children of compulsory school age who are not registered at a school — the Children Not in School register.
Registers of this kind already existed voluntarily in many areas. The change is that the register becomes compulsory and consistent: authorities must keep one, and parents are expected to provide certain information for it rather than choosing whether to make themselves known.
Alongside the register, local authorities are expected to have clearer duties around supporting and making enquiries about children on it. The precise shape of those duties — and of what parents must supply — is being set out in secondary legislation and statutory guidance that follow the Act. That is why so much of this page is phrased as “expected” rather than “will”.
For families
What changes for home-educating families
Home education remains lawful. The duty on parents has not changed in principle: you must secure an efficient, full-time education suitable to your child's age, ability and aptitude, and to any special educational needs they have. You can do that at home, in a group, with tutors, or in any combination.
Registration becomes an expectation, not a choice. The position set out during the Act's passage is that a parent must give their local authority the required information within 15 days of the child becoming registrable — in the ordinary case, within 15 days of deregistering from school. Confirm the current requirement with your authority when the time comes, because the operational detail sits in the regulations rather than the Act.
Being on a register makes enquiries more likely, not less. A named, consistent list means authorities will be in contact with families they previously did not know about. For most people this is a letter and a conversation, not an inspection — but it is a conversation that goes far better when you have something concrete to point at.
The scale is significant. Around 126,000 children were recorded in elective home education in England on the autumn 2025 census day, and roughly 175,900 were known to be home educated at some point during 2024/25 — around double pre-2020 levels. A great many families will be having these conversations for the first time.
In practice
What your local authority is likely to ask
The register itself is largely administrative. The conversation that follows it is about suitability — and it tends to circle the same six questions, whichever authority you are in.
What are you actually teaching?
A short written description of your approach and the subjects or areas you cover. It does not need to be a school timetable — an outline of what your child is working through, and why, is usually what's wanted.
Is it actually happening?
Some evidence that the plan is real: work your child has produced, dated and over a period of time. A single perfect folder proves less than an ordinary record kept consistently.
How much of it, and how often?
'Efficient and full-time' is the legal language. In practice that means being able to say roughly how much time is spent, on what, across a term — rather than defending a specific number of hours.
Can you show us some of it?
Photographs, written work, projects, trips, books read, things built. Concrete examples do far more work in a review than any amount of description.
Who else is involved?
Tutors, groups, online courses, sports and music teaching. The register itself is expected to record where a child receives education, so knowing who does what — and having it written down — is worth having ready.
Is it suitable for this child?
Suitability is judged against your child's age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs — not against a national average. If your child learns differently, say so, and show how the approach fits them.
What “suitable education” evidence looks like
There is no statutory curriculum for home education and no official template for evidence. That deliberate breadth is a feature, not a loophole: a structured programme and an autonomous, interest-led approach can both be entirely suitable. What tends to satisfy an enquiry is not polish but consistency and specificity — dated examples across a period of time, a clear description of your approach in your own words, and a sense of how the education fits this particular child.
A folder of dated work, a term's worth of logged hours, photographs of projects and trips, a reading list, and a paragraph explaining why you do it the way you do will answer most questions. You do not need software for any of that, and anyone telling you that you do is selling something. What software changes is when the work happens: a few minutes a week as you go, instead of a fortnight of reconstruction when a letter lands.
Getting ready
Turning each of those into a record you already have
Here is each need matched to what AltEd genuinely does today. Everything listed below is built and working — where something isn't built, we say so on the page rather than in the small print.
Need 1
A description of the education you provide
Write a curriculum per subject and break it into lessons. It becomes the written description of your approach — the thing that is hardest to produce from memory the week a letter arrives.
Read the curriculum guideNeed 2
Proof that the plan is really happening
Set assignments against those lessons, mark them and leave feedback. The gradebook then shows progress per subject over time, built from ordinary weekly work rather than assembled for a review.
Read the assignments guideNeed 3
Days and hours you can actually state
Log attendance and hours with a note of what was covered. The totals per subject and per term are then simply there — no reconstructing a year from a wall calendar and guesswork.
Read the progress & attendance guideNeed 4
Examples of your child's work
Portfolio entries — a photograph and a note, tagged to a subject and dated — captured in the moment. Ten seconds after a good afternoon beats an evening of scrolling your camera roll later.
Need 5
Something you can hand over or post
A printable education record and transcript, drawn from the marks, hours and evidence you have already recorded. You print it; you don't sit down to write it.
Browse the guidesNeed 6
A record of who else teaches your child
Invite tutors and providers as consent-based connections. Their sessions appear on your shared calendar and their attendance is recorded alongside everything else, so the full picture of your child's week is in one place.
Read the connections guideNeed 7
Consistency across the whole year
A shared calendar with recurrence keeps the rhythm visible, an iCalendar subscription feed puts it in your own calendar app, and catch-up rescheduling moves incomplete work forward honestly when a week goes sideways.
Read the calendar guide
What AltEd does not do: it does not submit anything to your local authority, it cannot tell you whether your provision is suitable, and it is not a compliance guarantee. It keeps an organised, dated record and prints it. The judgement, and the conversation, stay yours.
FAQ
Questions families are asking
Where to check the official position
This page is a starting point written by a software company. For anything that matters, go to the source — and to your own local authority, whose published elective home education policy will tell you how they work in practice.
- GOV.UK — educating your child at home
The official starting point for home education in England.
- GOV.UK — find your local council
Your authority's own elective home education page is the practical source.
- legislation.gov.uk
The text of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and the regulations made under it.
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General information only · Not legal advice · Check GOV.UK and your local authority