Home Learning Packs by Year Group: England KS1, KS2, and KS3

Parents who are new to home education in England often start by asking a very reasonable question: what should my child actually be learning this year? The honest answer under English law is that home-educated children are not legally required to follow the National Curriculum at all — but that doesn't mean you have to invent your provision from scratch. Understanding what National Curriculum year groups cover gives you a useful planning baseline, a ready-made vocabulary for LA reports, and the confidence to either follow, adapt, or deliberately depart from it.

This guide covers practical home learning resources and documentation approaches for KS1 (Years 1-2), KS2 (Years 3-6), and KS3 (Years 7-9), with particular focus on Years 2, 3, and 7 — the year groups where families most often search for structured packs.

Why Year Group Packs Are Both Useful and Limiting

Structured year group learning packs — published by providers like Classroom Secrets, CGP, Collins, and Schofield & Sims — are genuinely useful as a starting point. They tell you roughly what content a child of a given age is typically encountering in English schools, and they provide ready-made activities that require minimal planning.

The limitation is that they are built for the school classroom model: 30 children, a teacher managing multiple groups, statutory assessment checkpoints. As a home educator, you are working with a single child (or a small group), which means you can move faster through material your child grasps easily, spend longer on material they find difficult, and skip content entirely if it doesn't suit your pedagogical approach.

The most effective home educators use year group packs as a resource bank rather than a prescribed schedule.

Year 1 and Year 2: KS1 at Home

At KS1, the National Curriculum focuses on:

• English: Phonics (completing the phonics programme begun in Reception), reading fluency, early handwriting, and simple sentence construction. The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is a statutory assessment in schools, but home-educated children are not required to sit it.
• Maths: Number bonds, counting in 2s/5s/10s, simple addition and subtraction, beginning multiplication and division concepts, basic shape and measurement.
• Science: Everyday materials, animals including humans, plants, seasonal changes.
• RE (Religious Education): While RE is a statutory subject in schools, home educators in England are not required to teach it. If you choose to include it, Year 1 and Year 2 RE in the National Curriculum typically covers stories from major world religions. Note that this is one area where families with strong faith commitments often develop their own RE provision, and this is entirely lawful.
• History, Geography, Art, DT, PE, Music: Topic-based at KS1, typically exploring local history, seasonal geography, and practical making/doing activities.

Resources for KS1 home learning packs:

• Classroom Secrets offers free and premium year group packs covering maths and literacy. Their Year 1 and Year 2 booklets are used by schools for homework but work equally well at home.
• CGP books for KS1 provide clear explanations and practice questions for English and Maths.
• BBC Bitesize KS1 is free and covers all core subjects with interactive activities.
• Oak National Academy (free) provides complete, teacher-filmed lesson sequences for every KS1 subject.

Documenting KS1 for the LA: At this age, focus your annual report on literacy and numeracy progression. For example: "Reading: moved from phonics-based decoding to independent reading of simple chapter books; completed [specific reading scheme or books]. Maths: secure in number bonds to 10 and 20; beginning multiplication tables. Science: plant growth observation project over six weeks."

Year 3 and Beyond: KS2 at Home

KS2 spans Years 3 to 6 (roughly ages 7-11). The workload increases noticeably at Year 3 and the content becomes more specific:

• English: Grammar terminology becomes more formal (clauses, conjunctions, verb tenses), writing becomes more extended, reading comprehension requires inference and deduction skills.
• Maths: Times tables to 12 (tested in the Multiplication Tables Check in Year 4 in schools), long multiplication and division, fractions, decimals, and early percentages by Year 5-6.
• Science: Rocks, light, forces, living things, evolution (Year 6), electricity. Experimental science becomes more structured.
• Humanities: British history topics (Stone Age to Iron Age, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Tudors, World War II depending on year group), UK and world geography.

Home learning packs for Year 3:

• CGP KS2 revision books are available for all subjects from Year 3 onwards and are the most widely used resource across the EHE community.
• Classroom Secrets home learning booklets for KS2 are structured as weekly practice packs and can be printed or used digitally.
• White Rose Maths offers free year-by-year schemes of learning for primary maths with printable activities.
• Hamilton Trust provides weekly lesson plans for primary subjects (free access available).

At Year 3, it's also worth beginning to establish the documentation habits that will serve you through KS3 and beyond: a weekly learning log, a reading record, and a simple folder (physical or digital) organising completed work by subject. Ten to fifteen minutes per week is enough to maintain records that will make your LA annual report straightforward to write.

Year 7 and KS3: The Transition to Secondary

Year 7 marks the beginning of KS3 (Years 7-9) and is the point where home education documentation expectations shift significantly. At this stage, LA officers increasingly expect to see evidence of subject-specialist provision, independent study, and a clear trajectory toward qualification-level work.

The National Curriculum at KS3 introduces:

• English: Literary analysis, extended writing in multiple forms, grammar and vocabulary development at a sophisticated level.
• Maths: Algebra, geometry, statistics, ratio and proportion, pre-GCSE preparation.
• Science: Biology, Chemistry, and Physics treated as distinct subjects. Practical experiments become central.
• Humanities: Thematic history (World War I, Cold War, colonialism), physical and human geography at greater scale.
• Languages, Computing, Art, DT, PE: All part of a broad and balanced KS3 offer in schools; home educators make their own choices here.

Resources for Year 7 and KS3:

• CGP KS3 books exist for all core subjects and serve as the most accessible paid resource.
• Oak National Academy (free) has complete KS3 programmes for English, Maths, Science, History, and Geography.
• BBC Bitesize KS3 (free) covers all subjects with explanations and quizzes.
• Tassomai and Seneca offer adaptive online learning for KS3 science and humanities.
• Dr Frost Maths (free) provides comprehensive KS3 and GCSE maths resources including video explanations.

Documenting KS3 for the LA: At Year 7, your annual report should start demonstrating subject breadth and analytical skill development. List specific topics covered within each subject rather than just noting "Maths" or "Science." For example: "Maths: completed algebra (single and double brackets, solving equations), begun geometry (angles, properties of shapes). Science: Biology — cells, tissues, and organs; Chemistry — atoms, elements, and compounds; Physics — forces and motion." This level of specificity signals age-appropriate provision.

How to Build a Sustainable Home Learning Pack System

Rather than purchasing a comprehensive off-the-shelf pack and feeling obliged to complete every page, the families who sustain home education most effectively over the long term build their own flexible packs from free and low-cost sources:

1. Core subjects: Use White Rose Maths for structured maths progression and Oak National Academy for everything else as your backbone.
2. Supplementary practice: Add CGP books or Classroom Secrets booklets for the subjects where your child benefits from written practice.
3. Project-based learning: Layer in topic projects, museum visits, and library use for humanities and science.
4. Documentation built in: Keep a simple weekly learning log as you go — 5 minutes per subject per week. This makes your LA annual report a straightforward summary rather than a reconstruction exercise.

If you want a ready-made documentation framework that works across all year groups, the England Portfolio & Assessment Templates include weekly learning logs, annual report templates, and a documentation guide built specifically for the English EHE legal context — designed to make satisfying your local authority straightforward without over-sharing or inviting unnecessary scrutiny.

What to Expect from Year Group Transitions

The years that typically generate the most parental uncertainty in home education are Year 3 (KS2 begins, expectations increase), Year 7 (KS3 begins, subject breadth widens), and Year 10 (GCSE choices). At each transition, the key is not to replicate the school model, but to ensure your documentation reflects the child's advancing capability and the increasingly sophisticated nature of their work.

England's EHE legal framework is genuinely permissive compared to many countries — you have the right to teach your child according to your own educational philosophy at every stage. Your only legal obligation is to be able to demonstrate, if asked, that what you are doing constitutes a suitable and efficient full-time education. A clear, year-by-year documentation practice is the most effective way to protect that right.

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