Home Education Groups UK: How to Find Your Local Community

One of the first questions every new home educator asks is: "How do I find other families?" You've made the decision to home educate, you've told the school, and now you're staring at a Tuesday morning wondering where your child is supposed to meet other children. The answer is: there are thousands of home educating families near you, but they're not standing in a school playground — you have to know where to look.

The good news is that the UK home education community is large, well-organised, and genuinely welcoming. In England alone, 175,900 children were home educated at some point during the 2024/2025 academic year — a 15% rise from the year before. London alone saw numbers climb from around 9,500 to nearly 12,000 in the same period. You are far from alone.

Where Home Education Groups Actually Gather

Facebook is the primary infrastructure for the UK home education community. This is not an exaggeration. The majority of active local groups are run through Facebook, often as private or closed groups to protect family privacy. Before you search anywhere else, start by searching Facebook for your county or city plus "home education" or "home ed."

The HEFA UK (Home Educating Families across the UK) Facebook group is the largest single gathering point and maintains a regularly updated directory of local groups. Educational Freedom (educationalfreedom.org.uk) also maintains a "Find Your Local Group" directory organised by region.

Once you've found a county-level group, look for sub-groups. A "London home educators" group will likely have splinter groups for North London, South London, and specific boroughs. The more specific, the more useful — a group for Hackney families is more actionable than a group for all of England.

Finding Groups by Region

London: The home education increase in London has been among the steepest in England. Expect to find multiple active groups: South London Home Educators' Hub, various borough-specific groups, and daytime sessions at museums and leisure centres that naturally aggregate home educating families. The Horniman Museum, the Museum of London, and numerous leisure centres run dedicated home education days during school hours.

Brighton and Hove: Brighton and Hove Home Education is the primary local Facebook group. Brighton has one of the most active home education scenes in the South East, partly because the city has a high concentration of alternative-minded families and good access to outdoor spaces.

Surrey: Surrey HELP (Home Educators Learning Project) is the established network. Surrey's proximity to London means families have access to both local groups and London-based resources. Look also for groups in specific towns like Guildford, Woking, and Reigate.

Oxfordshire: Home education in Oxfordshire has a strong community, with Facebook groups and co-ops operating across the county. Oxford's libraries and museums are home education friendly, and the countryside provides excellent Forest School opportunities.

Lancashire: Home education groups in Lancashire tend to be active across the larger towns — Preston, Blackpool, Lancaster. Search specifically for your town as well as the county-level group, since Lancashire is geographically large.

Warwickshire: Look for county-level Facebook groups and co-ops based in Coventry, Leamington Spa, and Stratford-upon-Avon. The Midlands generally has a strong HELM (Home Educators of West Midlands) network that covers the broader area.

Leicester: Leicester has a culturally diverse home education community. Local Facebook groups and the broader East Midlands home education network serve the area. Leicester's museums and parks provide good free venues for group activities.

Edinburgh: Home Education Scotland (HEAS) is the national body. In Edinburgh specifically, look for Facebook groups and also connect with local leisure centres — Edinburgh Leisure runs daytime sessions during school hours. Note that Scotland has a different legal framework: parents must apply to the local authority for consent to withdraw a child from a registered school.

Dorset: Home education in Dorset has an active community, with groups across Bournemouth, Poole, and the more rural west of the county. Dorset's coastline and countryside make it excellent for nature-based and Forest School activities.

Beyond Facebook: Other Ways to Find Groups

Libraries are free and low-pressure entry points. Many UK public libraries host home educator meet-and-share groups, especially those running the Summer Reading Challenge or National Storytelling Week events. Suffolk Community Libraries, for example, offers a dedicated Home Educator Library Card with extended borrowing limits. Even where no formal group exists, turning up at daytime library sessions puts you in the path of other home educating families.

Leisure centres are underrated as community hubs. Better (GLL) and Everyone Active run daytime sessions during school hours that attract home educating families. Booking into a Tuesday morning swim class puts your child alongside other home educated children week after week — the consistency is what builds friendship.

National Trust sites offer the Education Group Access Pass (EGAP) at £63/year for home educating families, valid during school hours in term time. Many National Trust properties have regular home educator days, which means you arrive at a venue alongside a pre-assembled group of families.

Co-op directories: The Co-operatives UK directory lists over 6,000 registered co-ops, some of which are home education co-ops. This is particularly useful if you want an academically structured group rather than a social meet-up.

Making the Most of Your Local Network

Finding the group is the easy part. The harder work is showing up consistently. Home education friendships are built on regularity — the same park on the same Tuesday, the same co-op every Wednesday — because there is no daily school contact to do the work of familiarity.

When you first join a group, don't wait for the perfect activity. Attend whatever they're already doing. Offer to help organise something. The families who become embedded in these communities do so by contributing, not just consuming.

If you are in a genuinely rural area with no local group, consider starting a small monthly meet-up yourself — even four families gathering at a village hall or park is enough to provide meaningful peer contact for your children. National groups like Education Otherwise and the Home Education Advisory Service (HEAS) can connect you with families in your area who are also looking to build something.

For a structured approach to building your socialization calendar — including templates for weekly rhythms, how to negotiate access to activities, and a directory-style list of UK-specific resources — the UK Socialization & Extracurricular Playbook covers all of this in one place.

A Note on the Numbers

The home education community in the UK is growing rapidly. That means more groups are forming all the time, and groups that were dormant two years ago may now be active. Even if a search today turns up nothing, search again in six months. Join the national Facebook groups now and ask — someone will know of a local group, or will be looking to start one.

The community is there. It just takes a little effort to find your corner of it.

See more United Kingdom homeschool guides →