Is the rise in home schooling down to mental health?

There has been a marked increase in the rates of home schooling in the UK since Covid. David Frayman and Ben Helme look into the causes behind this increase, and argue that a rise in mental health issues among young people could be behind this trend.

Since school doors shut during the Covid-19 pandemic, children and young people in England have been more likely to disengage with education. This is evident in higher rates of absence among school pupils, a subject of serious concern among education policymakers . But missing from these statistics are a group who should perhaps be of even greater concern: children leaving the school system to be educated at home.^[1]

The growing number being educated at home

The recent introduction of systematic national data collection on home schooled children documents a marked increase in home schooling after Covid-19. In the Autumn term of the 2022/2023 school year, around 81,000 (one per cent) English children and young people of compulsory school age (5-16) were in Elective Home Education (EHE), widely referred to as “home schooling”. By Autumn 2025, this had risen to around 126,000 (1.5 per cent) children.

Figure 1 note: The slight decrease from the Summer 2025 to Autumn 2025 is consistent with the seasonal trend in EHE rates.). Source: Department for Education, Elective home education, Explore Education Statistics, multiple releases (2023–2026)^[2]

This increase is accounted for by a large rise in inflows of children moving into home schooling, with outflows back into school remaining flat. Between the 2021-22 and 2023-24 school years, net inflows per year more than doubled to around 50,000. Whilst they have since remained stable, they remain at significantly higher levels than a few years ago, which suggests the rise in the number of children being home schooled is likely to continue into the near future.

Figure 2 note: net inflow to home schooling is the number of students moving from schools to home education, less the numbers moving from home education to schooling. This does not include the students who age out of compulsory education.

Is worse mental health to blame?

Concerningly, there are signs the rise in home schooling may be linked to a wider increase in mental distress among children and young people. Data collected by local authorities on the “primary reason given by the parent/guardian” for why a child first started home-schooling show a significant increase in the proportion stating mental health concerns. Between Autumn term 2022 and 2025, this increased from 14 per cent to 23 per cent of primary reasons cited by families, becoming the most common cause given for home schooling. At the same time, dissatisfaction with schools’ SEND provision has increased from 3 per cent to 6 per cent of reasons given. The proportion of families listing “philosophical or preferential” reasons has fallen from 25 per cent to 17 per cent.^[3]

This suggests that the growth in home schooling is not driven by an increase in families who as a matter of principle want to educate their children at home. Instead, the increase may be more a response to increasing mental health-related needs, as well as a potential decline in the capacity of the school and health systems to meet them.

The London divide

A striking feature of home-schooling trends is the difference between London and the rest of the country. All the main national trends since 2021 have been less pronounced in London: fewer children are home schooled, home-schooling rates have risen less, and a smaller share of cases is attributed to mental health issues.

Figure 3 note: the primary reason percentages exclude cases where the reason not known or provided.)

While these differences almost certainly reflect a mix of factors — London schools have performed better than the rest of the country for some time , while the higher cost of housing space and the greater opportunity cost of leaving the labour market may make home schooling less attractive to London parents — analysis of the UK’s national panel survey, Understanding Society , suggests that this regional pattern is also partly linked to mental health. The divergence in home schooling rates between London and the rest of the country coincides with diverging trends in young people’s self-reported emotional symptoms and happiness at school. In 2023, 10- to 16-year-olds in London reported substantially lower levels of internalising behaviours, anxiety and low mood than their peers elsewhere in the England. They were also significantly happier at school — reversing the pre-Covid pattern, when reported happiness at school was lower among young people in London.^[4][5]

How concerned should we be?

Motivations for home schooling are often complex and reflect parental judgement about what is best for a child’s circumstances. There is no sound empirical evidence on whether home schooling produces better or worse long-term outcomes. Nor is its growth entirely new: home schooling has been rising gradually since the 1990s, when the number of home-schooled children was estimated to be still below 15,000 .^[6]

Yet the recent increase is unprecedented in its speed and has taken home schooling to levels not seen in modern British educational history. Unambiguously concerning is the rise in the number of pupils for whom mental health is given as the reason for leaving school. It may mean that difficulties which would previously have been visible within the school system are becoming less visible. The overlap of these trends with existing regional inequalities makes the case for greater attention more compelling still.

We still know remarkably little about how leaving school for home education affects children. But the consequences for their education, social relationships and wellbeing could be profound. The post-Covid rise in home schooling may be quietly reshaping the lives of tens of thousands of children and young people.

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.