Withdrawal from school to elective home educate

If a parent decides to withdraw their child from school and seeks guidance from us, we will provide verbal and written information (see paragraph 2.6). In addition to this, we will draw your attention to a range of contacts set out in this guidance.

Whenever possible the local authority will encourage parents to discuss an intention to EHE before putting into effect. Schools will therefore invite parents to a meeting which will be attended by the representatives of the local authority. The LA role at this meeting will be to offer independent advice to the parent. Schools must make a return (giving the child's name, address and the ground upon which their name is to be deleted from the register) to the local authority as soon as the ground for deletion is met and no later than deleting the pupil's name from the register.

If a child is registered at a school as a result of an SAO, the parents must get the order revoked by us on the ground that arrangements have been made for the child to receive suitable education otherwise than at school, before the child can be deleted from the schools register and educated at home.

DfE guidance strongly recommends parents notify us so that we can facilitate access to advice and support available. The only exception to this is where your child is attending a special school under arrangements made by us, in which case additional permission is required from us before the child's name can be removed from the register.

We appreciate in the early stages, parents' plans may not be detailed and they may not yet be in a position to demonstrate all the characteristics of an "efficient and suitable" educational provision. However, families should be aiming to offer satisfactory home education from the outset, and to have made preparations with that aim, as time lost in education a child is difficult to recover.

Schools must not seek to persuade parents to educate their children at home as a way of avoiding an exclusion or because the child has a poor attendance record. In the case of exclusion, they must follow the statutory guidance. If the pupil has a poor attendance record, the school and local authority will address the issues behind the absenteeism and use the other remedies available to them.

In most cases, if you make to decision for your child to return to school within 6 months of deregistration, the Local Authority will require the previous school to place your child back on roll before any change of placement can be considered, as agreed by all schools in the Fair Access Protocol. (FAP).