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Home education

Home education (also known as home schooling) is where parents/carers choose to become the main educator of their child. They take legal responsibility for deciding what and how their child will learn, and in most cases, this is with support from schools and local authority.

Parents of children who are attending an education establishment in Glasgow City Region have a responsibility to inform the education authority of their wish to withdraw the child from school to home educate and to request the Local Authority's consent to do so. However, consent is not needed in the following circumstances:

  • The child has never attended public school.
  • The child has never attended public school in that local authority.
  • The child is being withdrawn from an independent school.
  • The child has finished primary education and not yet started secondary.
  • The school the child has been attending has closed.

Glasgow City Council does not provide data on how many young people are currently being home schooled in the city, nor does Scottish Government provide information at a national level. The Scottish Government recommends that local authorities make contact with families known to be home schooling in their area on an annual basis, but this is not a statutory requirement. 

The Free Home Education Information Support organisation collated data on the number of home-educated children in each Local Authority in England, Wales and Scotland. Not all local authorities replied, some refused to answer, some didn’t answer all the questions, and some gave data potentially incorrect. However data showed that between September 2022 and March 2023, 263 children were home educated in Glasgow. There are no previous data to compare this to. 

Notes

This page was updated in June 2024.