Welcome

You have found the website for HEED - Home Educators of East Dorset. We are a group of parents who educate our children at home instead of sending them to school. Yes, it's legal! You could do it too, and we hope the information contained on this website will help you decide whether it's the right option for you and your family.

To Home Educate you don't need to:

1. Be a teacher - many teachers are choosing home-based education for their own children, but most Home Educators have no qualifications in this field. Many times you'll find that the parents are learning alongside their child; either whilst helping with subjects that the adult has no previous knowledge of, or whilst remembering and building on subjects that they dimly recall from their own education.
   

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3. Follow the National Curriculum (NC) - you don't have to follow the NC unless you want to. With home-based education you have the flexibility to follow your child's interests instead. You also don't have to put your child through SATs!
   

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5. Provide 'school-at-home' - unless this method suits you and your child. There are many ways to help a child to learn, and mirroring the way they do it at school is only one. There are Home Educators that follow a child-led, autonomous style, and others that purchase whole curriculums to use. In between there is a whole range of other ways. One of them should be suitable for your own child. If you should decide to follow a 'school-at-home' path you'll most likely find that you can cover more in two hours a day than they can cover in a whole day at school.
   

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7. Spend a lot of money - Home Education can be as expensive or as cheap as you personally make it. There are a wealth of resources available online, plus the Library, educational programs on television, museums, local groups etc. Some places will give you the schools discount if you state that you are Home Educating as well.
   

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9. Be subject to inspections by the Local Education Authority (LEA) - but the LEA does have a duty to intervene if it appears that a child is not receiving a suitable education. The LEA is allowed to make informal enquiries to satisfy themselves. Some Home Educators are happy to have a LEA representative visit with them at home and have their child show what they have been doing. Others prefer to send a written Educational Philosophy to the LEA, or meet with them on neutral ground to discuss matters. Some Home Educators never even hear from the LEA. It is worth remembering that the LEA has no legal right of entry to your home, and no rights to test your child. However, if the LEA believes that your child is not receiving a suitable education they can issue a School Attendance Order and force your child to attend the school of their choice. This is a very rare occurrence though, and should not happen without a lot of prior correspondence.