Academic year 2023/24

Elective home education

Data guidance

Published 29 February 2024

Description

This document describes the data included in the Elective home education ad-hoc statistics release underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in a new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab). The methodology document should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.

Coverage

The release provides information on the number of children in elective home education at census date in each term, plus the number of children in elective home education education at any time in the previous academic year.

File formats and conventions

LA and regional data has been rounded to the nearest 10, national figures are rounded to the nearest 100. 

The following convention is used throughout the underlying data. 

x - unavailable

low - denotes figures based on count that rounds to 0, but is not 0. Figures may not sum to breakdowns due to rounding.

Data files

All data files associated with this releases are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.

Elective home education at census date

• Filename: ehe_census.csv
• Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
• Time period: 2022/23 Autumn term to 2023/24 Autumn term
• Content:

  The number of children in elective home education at the census date in each term. Includes Autumn 2022 to Autumn 2023.

  Includes breakdowns by sex, expected year group and primary reason for EHE

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
filter	EHE children on census date by characteristics
number	Number of EHE children on census date
pc	Percentage of EHE children on census date
rate	Rate of EHE children on census day by population

Footnotes

1. Local authority response rates to the data collection vary by census date. To account for non-response, national and regional figures have been uprated based on local authority pupil populations. 
2. Rates of EHE are calculated based on ONS mid-year population estimates (opens in a new tab) for children aged 5 to 16 years. The rates for 2023/24 are based on 2022 population estimates.

Elective home education at any point in the academic year

• Filename: ehe_academic_year.csv
• Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
• Time period: 2021/22 to 2022/23
• Content:

  The number of children in elective home education (EHE) at any point in the academic year. Includes 2021/22 and 2022/23 academic years only.

  Includes the number of starts in EHE, number of returns to education, number of section 437(1) notices issued, number of school attendance orders and school attendance orders revoked

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
ehe_anytime_full_year	Number of EHE children at any point during the year
ehe_leave	Number of EHE children who leave the local authority during the year
ehe_returns_full_year	Number of EHE children returning to school during the year
ehe_sao_issued_full_year	Number of school attendance orders issued
ehe_sao_revoked_full_year	Number of school attendance orders revoked
ehe_schtype_acad	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type academy
ehe_schtype_acad_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type academy
ehe_schtype_ap	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type alternative provision
ehe_schtype_ap_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type alternative provision
ehe_schtype_ehe	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type home educated outside the local authority
ehe_schtype_ehe_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type home educated outside the local authority
ehe_schtype_else_unk	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type elsewhere/unknown
ehe_schtype_else_unk_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type elsewhere/unknown
ehe_schtype_ey	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type early years
ehe_schtype_ey_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type early years
ehe_schtype_free	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type free school
ehe_schtype_free_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type free school
ehe_schtype_ind	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type independent
ehe_schtype_ind_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type independent
ehe_schtype_lamain	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type local authority maintained
ehe_schtype_lamain_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type local authority maintained
ehe_schtype_none	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type none (previously not of compulsory school age)
ehe_schtype_none_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type none (previously not of compulsory school age)
ehe_schtype_pru	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type pupil referral unit
ehe_schtype_pru_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type pupil referral unit
ehe_schtype_spec	Number of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type special
ehe_schtype_spec_pc	Percentage of children who started EHE in the year with previous school type special
ehe_section_437_full_year	Number of section 437(1) notices issued
ehe_starts_full_year	Number of children who started EHE during the year

Footnotes

1. Local authority response rates to the data collection vary by census date. To account for non-response, national and regional figures have been uprated based on local authority pupil populations.