Home education in North Yorkshire

Covers North Yorkshire Council, England, the unitary council that replaced the county's seven district and borough councils on 1 April 2023. City of York has its own council. General information, not legal advice. Checked against the council's own pages on 2 November 2026.

After you deregister

If you're still deciding, the council's page for families considering home education suggests asking the school for a pre-decision meeting, with an adviser and any professionals already working with your family. It's a chance to talk through why, look at other options and get a named contact. Nothing in the law makes it a condition of leaving: our guide to taking your child off the school roll sets out what is required.

When you've decided, write to the head teacher. The school can't remove your child without that written notice, and the council's home education policy says it must then tell the council, ideally the same day. If your child has never been to school, the council recommends you let it know.

A child on the roll of a special school can't be home educated without the council's consent. There, the SEN caseworker runs the pre-decision meeting and the council's Inclusion Management Team decides. If it agrees, the EHC plan is amended to say you've made your own arrangements, with an annual review within three months. With a plan at a mainstream school, speak to your SEN caseworker as soon as you can. A looked-after child needs the council's agreement, given through the Virtual School head teacher. For the wider rules, read home education and SEND.

When the council gets in touch

About one month in, an adviser contacts you to hear about the education you've arranged, weighing nine factors such as where and when learning happens, evidence of progress and chances to mix with other children. If the education meets their threshold, the next contact comes around 12 months later, or earlier if exams are due.

If it doesn't, the adviser explains what to change and gives you four weeks. If it still isn't suitable, the council serves a notice under section 437(1), giving you 15 days before it moves towards a school attendance order. The policy accepts you aren't obliged to send samples of work, but says that if you don't and the advisers have reasonable concerns, it will serve that notice and record your child as a child missing education.

North Yorkshire's own guidance for parents describes that first contact as a meeting, and its one-minute guide says the council would value meeting you in person. Neither mentions a written report as an alternative. The DfE's guidance for parents says education law doesn't oblige you to agree to a meeting or produce specific evidence, though if you don't do enough to satisfy the council it may conclude the education isn't suitable. For how families usually answer in writing, read replying to the council, and what a council's policy can and can't ask for.

The policy is dated November 2025 and is due for review in the autumn term of 2028, or sooner if the DfE updates its guidance.

Exams

The council says there's no funding for exams once your child leaves school. If the head teacher agreed when your child left, the school may let them come back to sit exams, through flexi-schooling or by giving syllabus details and an exam place, confirmed before February of the exam year. Who pays depends on what was agreed. Otherwise you find a centre and pay the fees: our guide to exam centres for private candidates covers how. Some colleges also take home-educated 14 and 15 year olds; you apply to them directly.

Support the council lists

The council's elective home education local offer has:

• A page for families already home educating with a resource pack, exam information, a list of post-16 providers in and around the county, and careers advice through the National Careers Service.
• The home education ID card, and pointers to the Healthy Child Team, early help and children's mental health services.
• A note that home-educated children can go to school-aged immunisation clinics, including to catch up on missed vaccines.
• SENDIASS North Yorkshire, which the council describes as impartial and at arm's length from it.

If you want a school place again, you make an in-year application, no more than a term ahead (school admissions).

Contacting the home education team

The policy sends families to the council's general enquiries page, which has an online form and the phone line, 0300 131 2131. The line is open 9am to 5pm Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 9.30am to 5pm on Wednesday and 9am to 4.30pm on Friday. The council's page for schools and professionals gives the team's inbox, electivehomeeducation@northyorks.gov.uk.