If you’ve just started researching home education, you’ve probably already noticed that reading about it can feel almost as complicated as actually doing it.
The terminology alone is a minefield. “Home education,” “homeschooling,” “home-schooling,” “home-ed” — they all describe the same thing, more or less, and yet they carry different connotations depending on who you’re talking to. Some home-educating parents feel quite strongly about it. Others use the terms interchangeably and get on with their lives.
Here’s what you actually need to know.
Why UK parents tend to prefer “home education”
In the US, “homeschooling” is the standard term. In the UK, many parents prefer “home education” — and that preference predates Covid by a long way. It’s rooted in a genuine philosophical difference about what educating at home actually means.
“Homeschooling” implies something specific: replicating school at home. And that’s something a lot of home-educating families actively don’t want to do. The whole point, for many of us, is to step away from the school model — the rigid timetable, the one-size curriculum, the pressure to keep pace with a class of thirty. Calling it “homeschooling” feels like importing the thing you left.
Post-Covid, the word picked up extra baggage. Lockdown learning — parents supervising worksheets while working from home, children on Zoom in their bedrooms, everyone miserable — got labelled “homeschooling” by the media, and the association stuck. But that wasn’t home education. That was an emergency patch on a broken situation, and the comparison isn’t fair in either direction.
Home education, when you choose it, looks nothing like either of those things. You write the curriculum. You choose the resources. You plan your days with flexibility. The terminology debate is worth understanding — but don’t let it put you off whichever word feels most natural to you.
How I use the terms on this site
For what it’s worth, here’s how I tend to use them — not as rules, just as a guide to what I mean when I write:
Home education — the whole thing. The complete pathway. The long game of educating your children outside school, from the first week to whenever they age out of it.
Homeschooling — the day-to-day of it. The lessons, the timetable, the routine, the actual school bit. We “home educate our children” and we “homeschool” every morning.
Home-ed — shorthand for both. Used when I’m not being precise, which is often.
And “home” in all of this? It doesn’t have to mean literally at home. Libraries, coffee shops, parks, home-ed learning groups, nature — the “home” in home education just means outside a conventional school classroom. It refers to the freedom as much as the location.
The one thing that doesn’t change whatever you call it
Whether you say home education or homeschooling, you’re taking on responsibility for your child’s learning — and you don’t have to do that by becoming their teacher. Facilitating an education can take many forms. If that feels daunting, this post on home educating without being your child’s teacher is a good place to start.
