Elective Home Education (EHE)

There is no legal requirement for home educated children to sit examinations. However, if your child would like to sit examinations, you will need to prepare for, organise and pay for these as their parent/ carer. BELS and the London Borough of Barnet do not organise and/or pay for examinations for home educated children. Your child’s previous school will also not organise and/or pay for your child’s examinations. Your child will not be sitting their exams at their previous school whilst home educated. Therefore, it is important that you start enquiring, planning and budgeting early if your child is intending to sit examinations. Please also note that exam centres are not obliged to accept your child for examinations.

We suggest that you:

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1.    Find an exam centre that is willing to accept private candidates. The tab ‘exam centres’ details some of these.

2.    Once you have found an exam centre, discuss with the exam officer, which exam board they use. Your child will need to study the same exam board syllabus which will in turn largely determine the study resources your child uses. The tab ‘exam boards’ details the exam boards: AQA, OCR, Pearson and WJEC.

3.    Visit the exam board’s website to purchase past papers for revision and helping structure your child’s studies. Past papers are also useful in helping understand your child’s level and progression.

4.    Should your child require extra time in examinations e.g. due to learning difficulties, medical difficulties or slow processing speeds, you should contact the exam centre at the earliest possible opportunity and share details about your child’s needs, including any evidence required. To secure extra time, the exam centre will be required to submit detailed evidence to the exam board, which may include (but not be limited to): Educational Psychologist reports, medical assessments, evidence of normal way of working etc. Applications for extra time are generally submitted to exam boards months before the exams, therefore you should speak to the exam centre well in advance. Missing deadlines could delay the approval process.

5.    Should your child have any special considerations - illness, injury or some other event at the time of taking their exams - you should visit the Joint Qualification Council website: https://www.jcq.org.uk/ to understand what counts as a special consideration and also inform the exam centre at the earliest possible opportunity, providing them with any necessary evidence that they require.