Independent view of official data · Autumn 2025
Elective home education by local authority
Choose a council to compare its published figure with its regional area and England. No account, ranking or personal information is involved.
- Children recorded
- 126,000
- Rate
- 1.5%
- Reason unknown or not provided
- Almost three in ten
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Figures are the Department for Education's published Autumn 2025 administrative census snapshot.
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Local authority
Published regional area
England
England
126,0001.5% of the school-age populationPublished reason breakdown
Reasons recorded
View every published reason value
| Reason | Share | Children |
|---|
England context
What the national return records
Reason percentages describe the published administrative return, not a survey of families.
Mental health
The most reported known reason nationally.
Philosophical or preferential
The second highlighted known reason in the release.
Unknown or not provided
17% was recorded as unknown and 12% as no reason given: almost three in ten.
See the four published Autumn-term England totals
| Academic year | Children | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 2022/23 | 80,900 | 1.0% |
| 2023/24 | 92,000 | 1.1% |
| 2024/25 | 111,700 | 1.4% |
| 2025/26 | 126,000 | 1.5% |
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Scope and limits
Administrative census
This is a council return at a census date, not fieldwork or a survey of children and families.
Developing statistics
The source is labelled official statistics in development. Collection became mandatory from Autumn 2024, so improved data quality can affect changes over time.
Separate cohorts
Children missing education and education otherwise than at school are reported separately and are not counted here as elective home education.
Suppressed values
Small values may be shown as “Low (suppressed)”. We do not estimate or combine a suppressed figure.
Source and reuse
Trace every figure
Source: Department for Education, Elective home education at census date, dataset 019bb857-0b36-7011-8d52-15ea8c0d18b0, version 1.0.1. Updated 2026-01-29; independently verified 2026-08-13.
Source data is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains public sector information licensed under that licence.