Home Education Gov.Wales: What the Official Guidance Actually Says

When Welsh parents start researching home education, one of their first stops is the official Welsh Government website. The guidance published at gov.wales is the document your local authority is legally required to apply when evaluating whether your child's education is suitable. Understanding what it actually says — and, crucially, what it does not say — is one of the most practically useful things you can do before your first LA contact.

The current guidance is the Elective Home Education statutory guidance, last updated in October 2023. It applies specifically to Wales. It is not the same as the Department for Education guidance published for England, and using an English guide when dealing with a Welsh local authority is a real misstep — Welsh education law diverges in several important ways.

What the Statutory Guidance Establishes

The Welsh Government guidance rests on a foundational principle from Section 7 of the Education Act 1996: the parent of every child of compulsory school age must ensure the child receives efficient full-time education suitable to their age, ability, and aptitude. Education is compulsory. School is not.

The guidance makes this explicit: home-educated children in Wales are not required to follow the Curriculum for Wales. They are not required to work to the same timetable or structure as a school. They are not required to sit specific assessments or achieve particular grades. The legal standard is "efficient and suitable" — a threshold interpreted through case law (specifically Harrison and Harrison v Stevenson) as meaning education that achieves what it sets out to achieve and prepares the child for life in modern society.

This is the bedrock you can return to in any LA correspondence. The statutory guidance — written by the Welsh Government itself — confirms your right to educate your child independently of the national curriculum and school timetable.

What Local Authorities Are Permitted to Do

The guidance also defines the duties of local authorities under Section 436A of the Education Act 1996. LAs must make arrangements to identify children of compulsory school age who are not receiving suitable education. This is an active statutory duty — they must do it, not just wait passively.

This is the basis for the "informal enquiry" letters that many Welsh families receive, particularly after deregistering from school. The LA is not conducting a safeguarding investigation when they send this letter (unless there are specific safeguarding concerns — which are governed by separate legislation). They are carrying out a routine duty to confirm that a child is receiving education.

What the guidance makes clear is that the LA's request for information must be reasonable and proportionate. Many Welsh LAs have shifted away from demanding "evidence" (a term that implies a legal burden of proof) toward requesting a discussion of "activities." The 2026 evaluation of the guidance noted this deliberate change in tone across a number of Welsh councils, as officers recognised that adversarial language was counter-productive.

Parents have the legal right to decline a home visit. The guidance explicitly acknowledges this. If a family prefers not to receive a home visit, they can satisfy an LA enquiry through a written report or by meeting at a neutral venue. The LA cannot force entry to your home on the basis of an EHE enquiry alone.

What the Guidance Does Not Require You to Do

It is worth being direct about several things the gov.wales guidance does not require, because these misconceptions cause unnecessary anxiety.

You are not required to submit a portfolio to your LA. Portfolios are a practical tool for demonstrating suitable provision — they are the most common and effective way to satisfy an informal enquiry — but there is no statutory obligation to compile one in any particular format.

You are not required to teach specific subjects or maintain a curriculum. The guidance notes that a suitable education must include literacy, numeracy, and language skills, and opportunities for social development. These are broad descriptors, not a subject list.

You are not required to track attendance or record hours. The guidance explicitly states that EHE families do not need to follow school hours or term times. Using a school-style attendance register is not only unnecessary — it can be actively unhelpful if submitted to a Welsh LA, as it implies you believe school-replication is the standard you must meet.

You are not required to use the Curriculum for Wales. You may choose to structure your child's learning around it if you find it a useful framework, but it has no statutory force for home-educated children.

The Individual Development Plan (IDP) Dimension

One area where the statutory guidance has significant implications is Additional Learning Needs. The ALNET Act 2018 replaced SEN statements with Individual Development Plans (IDPs) in Wales — a divergence from English law, which still uses Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).

If your child has an IDP and you deregister them from school, the responsibility for the IDP does not simply disappear. The school must notify the LA, and an LA panel must determine whether the child continues to have ALN that requires the LA to maintain an IDP even while home-educated. If the LA determines the IDP should continue, they have an active duty to arrange or contribute to the provision specified in it.

The guidance acknowledges that this places a significant administrative burden on families, and that some LAs handle IDP transitions better than others. The practical implication is that parents of children with IDPs need to document home provision in specific reference to the IDP's stated objectives — not because the guidance forces them to teach to those objectives, but because failing to engage with the IDP process tends to escalate into more intrusive LA involvement rather than less.

The Proposed Register and What It Means Practically

The gov.wales guidance you are reading now was written before the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill was introduced to Parliament in December 2024. That Bill, with specific amendments tabled in March 2025 to apply Welsh provisions to home-educated children, proposes a mandatory register requiring parents to formally notify their LA if they are home educating.

This is not yet law. But the direction of travel is clear. Wales' annual data shows that 7,176 children were formally known to Welsh authorities as home-educated in 2024/25, with the true figure likely significantly higher. The rate of 16-year-olds being home-educated has increased to 27 times the rate recorded in 2009/10. As numbers grow, legislative oversight is tightening.

Practically, this means that families who currently educate informally — particularly those who deregistered without notifying the LA — face an increasing likelihood of an enquiry as data-sharing between health, education, and council systems improves. The gov.wales guidance already references the Children Missing Education database being piloted to cross-reference health and education data. Maintaining proactive documentation now, before oversight tightens, is significantly less stressful than scrambling when a letter arrives.

Using the Gov.Wales Guidance in LA Correspondence

One of the most effective tools in responding to an LA enquiry is citing the Welsh Government's own guidance back to the LA officer. When you explain your provision in your written report, opening with a reference to Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 and the statutory guidance's definition of "efficient and suitable" immediately signals that you understand the legal framework and are operating within it deliberately.

If an LA request seems to exceed what the guidance supports — for example, if they demand curriculum planning documents formatted to the Curriculum for Wales, or insist on a home visit — you can politely note that the statutory guidance neither requires families to follow the Curriculum for Wales nor mandates that enquiries be conducted through home visits.

The professional, clear tone of this kind of response is far more effective than refusing to engage, which tends to escalate enquiries, or over-complying by producing school-style documentation that is not required and could inadvertently set expectations for future reviews.

For parents who want a structured framework to document provision in a way that directly aligns with the language of the Welsh Government's EHE guidance — covering literacy, numeracy, social development, and broader learning — the Wales Portfolio & Assessment Templates are built around the same statutory benchmarks the gov.wales guidance describes.

The current Welsh Government EHE statutory guidance is published at gov.wales. It is updated periodically — confirm you are reading the current version, particularly as the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill progresses through Parliament.

See more United Kingdom homeschool guides →