In what appears to be the Government laying some groundwork for the introduction of the ‘Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act ,’ they have just updated the guidance for local authorities on how they should approach the problem of ‘Children Missing Education’ (CME).
The term CME describes children not in school and not receiving an appropriate education in an alternative setting or at home. The 2025 update makes it clear that home educated children, where the local authority has deemed the educational provision to be unsuitable, are CME. This is in addition to children who are ‘compulsory school age’ (CSA),but don’t have a school place or have not started school, as well as children whose whereabouts/educational provision are unclear for an extended period of time. This should not be particularly alarming for home educators, although the tone has changed slightly; in reality, it has long been the case that home education deemed ‘unsuitable’ could result in a school attendance order and a judgment that the relevant children are ‘missing education.’
Absented from the definition ‘CME’, though, are home educated children who are receiving a suitable education where this has been verified by the local authority. Interestingly and notably, children who are electively home educated, but the local authority is yet to verify that they are receiving a suitable education, are also not included in the definition. This is broadly good news for home educating families – the law makes it clear that the default position is that they are providing suitable education until the local authority says otherwise. But I think it is important to note that home educators will have to be increasingly vigilant in their attempts to prove to the local authority that they are providing a suitable education for their children.
Furthermore, while the guidance is quite fair in making it clear that home education does not mean children are ‘missing education’, it does say that one of the ways that CME arises is from elective home education being unsuitable. So I think we can expect this guidance to give a strengthened mandate to local authorities to ascertain the suitability of home education.
There is one slight change in the 2025 guidance which impacts home educating parents, which is a subtle change in the wording about how they can withdraw their children from school. The 2025 guidance makes clear that the parent must give noticin writing that their child will be educated otherwise than at school from a particular date. In previous incarnations of the CME guidance the parent just needed to inform the school that they were withdrawing the child from that school. Additionally, under the 2025 guidance schools must now take steps to ensure that there is no ‘school attendance order’ (SAO) in place. If there is, parents can’t withdraw their child from school.
ParentPower Team
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