How to keep a home education record
We’ve been home educating for more than ten years. In the early years, I kept everything — saved every piece of work, just in case. Eventually, I found a simpler approach: a single Evidence of Education report, updated periodically, that I could share with the local authority if needed. Given that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 is likely to require something similar from all home educating families going forward, I’m sharing an example document and a draft you can use yourselves below.
Do I Need to Keep Records of Our Home Education?
One of the most important reasons to keep a record of your children’s learning has nothing to do with legislation. In those first months of home education, when you’re still finding your feet and the days feel shapeless and you’re genuinely not sure whether what you’re doing counts, having a record can be the difference between confidence and a spiral. Looking back at what a term or a year actually contained — the books read, the projects finished, the skills developed — does something useful for your parent-teacher brain: it makes the invisible visible. In home education, where a lot of the best learning happens without structured plans around it, writing down what a child has actually covered can help parents reaffirm that choice.
Under Section 7 of the Education Act 1996, the education you provide must be efficient, full-time, and appropriate to the child’s age, ability and aptitude. Home education rarely looks like school, which means explaining exactly what and how your children are learning — even when you know they are — can be tricky. The simplest way to do it is one annual document covering your approach, subjects covered, and the progress your child has made. Starting that habit now, before it’s required, is considerably easier than reconstructing a year’s learning from memory when someone asks.
A note on the law
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act came into law in April 2026. It introduces compulsory registration of home-educated children with local authorities — how that will be applied in practice is still waiting on secondary legislation. The Act also means some families (those classed as “relevant children”) will need consent before deregistering from school. Local authorities will have new powers to request information and, in some cases, home visits. The exact details won’t be confirmed until secondary legislation is finalised, but the registration requirement is coming, and with it a reasonable expectation that you’ll be able to describe what your child’s education looks like.
Getting into the habit of annual documentation now means that when registration arrives, you’re not starting from scratch. You have a record. You know what you’ve been doing and you can demonstrate it clearly. The downloadable Evidence of Education Report below is a structured template built around exactly that. It follows the shape of what a local authority would reasonably want to see: family details, your approach, subjects covered with approximate weekly time, progress notes, learning environment, any SEN provision, plans for the coming year, and a checklist of what evidence you hold. There’s a completed example — a fictional family, filled in fully — so you can see what a finished report looks like before you complete your own.
Updated: June 2026
