Free online homeschooling in the UK: What's available?

One of the least obvious things about homeschooling in the UK is how much of it can be done for free. Online schools charging £5,000 to £11,000 a year are the visible end of the market, but plenty of home-educated children in England learn from resources that cost their families nothing – or nearly nothing – outside exam fees.

This guide walks through what's truly free in 2026, what's free with limits, and how to build a workable homeschool setup at zero cost.

Three definitions worth separating up front.

Free forever. No paywall, no account required, no upsell that limits usable content. Oak National Academy, BBC Bitesize, Cognito, Corbett Maths and Khan Academy all sit here.

Free tier with a paid upgrade. Some content is free, more is behind a subscription. Save My Exams (free tier plus Premium from around £5 a month) is a clear example. Useful if the free tier covers what you need.

Free content but you pay elsewhere. Exam entry as a private candidate isn't free – roughly £200 to £320 per GCSE subject at a standard centre, more for A-Levels with practical endorsement. Even a completely free curriculum comes with this cost at the end. Budget for around £1,000 to £1,600 for a five-subject GCSE round and £1,000 to £3,000 for a three-A-Level round.

A workable free curriculum tends to combine three or four resources rather than relying on any single one. Each has strengths in different areas.

thenational.academy. Free, government-backed (an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Education). Publishes full lesson sequences from Reception to Year 11 across every national curriculum subject, with pupil-facing videos and worksheets.

Best for: families who want a full structured curriculum for free without having to build lesson plans themselves. Particularly strong for KS1 to KS3.

bbc.co.uk/bitesize. Free, publicly funded via the BBC. Covers EYFS, KS1, KS2, KS3, GCSE, National 4/5 (Scotland) and Higher (Scotland). GCSE content is aligned to specific exam boards (AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and CCEA) via subject-specific pages.

Best for: short exam-board-aligned topic recaps, quick revision, and finding a clean explanation of a specific concept quickly. Not designed as a full curriculum on its own.

cognito.org. Free. No paywall, no subscription. Video lessons for GCSE and iGCSE Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Combined Science and Maths. Notes and question banks for English Language, English Literature and Geography (video coverage is strongest for sciences and maths).

Boards covered: AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and CIE. There's also A-Level and IB content for the sciences.

Best for: homeschoolers using Cognito as their main GCSE science and maths platform. The topic-tagged questions and video lessons are set up for revision and mastery. Try it at cognito.org.

khanacademy.org. Free, US non-profit, ad-free. Strongest for maths – the K-12 US maths content maps well onto UK primary through GCSE. Also covers science, economics, computing and some humanities. Not aligned to UK exam boards but content-equivalent through GCSE and A-Level maths.

Best for: maths practice at any age, particularly for younger children building fluency, and for older children who need a different explanation of a concept from their main platform.

corbettmaths.com and drfrostmaths.com. Both free, both UK-focused.

Corbett Maths has free primary and GCSE/A-Level worksheets, video lessons and 5-a-day question packs – widely used in UK schools and homeschools alike.

Dr Frost Maths is a free interactive maths platform covering KS3 to A-Level. Both are worth having in the mix.

Best for: a free structured maths programme, particularly for GCSE.

physicsandmathstutor.com (also pmt.education). Free notes, worksheets and past papers for GCSE, iGCSE and A-Level across maths, physics, biology, chemistry, economics, geography, English, psychology and computer science. Paid 1-to-1 tutoring and crash courses are available but the notes and past-paper archive are free.

Best for: revision-stage students wanting exam-focused notes and topic-tagged past-paper questions.

savemyexams.com. The free tier includes some revision notes and past papers accessible without an account. Full access is Premium, from around £5 a month with a 7-day free trial. There's also a scholarship of 10 free annual accounts per month for eligible students.

Best for: exam-style questions with model answers when the free tier covers the syllabus you need.

AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC, Eduqas, Cambridge International and Pearson Edexcel International all publish past papers on their own websites, free. Mark schemes and examiner reports are usually free too. This is one of the most valuable resource for GCSE and A-Level preparation.

Best for: exam-year revision and mock practice. Do at least three years' worth of papers per subject before the real exam.

Both free at the level most homeschoolers need. Quizlet is easier to use and has a large library of shared decks; Anki is more powerful for spaced repetition. Combine either with the "blurt" technique – read notes, close them, write from memory – and you have a working retrieval-practice loop for zero cost.

A realistic free-only homeschool week for a Year 10 student sitting iGCSE sciences and maths might look like this:

Total software cost: £0. Total content cost: £0. Only outlay is exam entry, roughly £1,000 to £1,600 for a five-subject iGCSE round at a standard private candidate centre.

Free doesn't work equally well for every subject or child. The main gaps:

• Live teacher feedback. Free platforms give you videos, notes and self-marked questions. They don't mark essays, correct working or catch misconceptions in real time. If your child needs a teacher to look at their answers, either you fill that role, or you pay for tutoring, or you look at self-paced providers with tutor feedback (Wolsey Hall Oxford or Oxford Home Schooling).
• Coursework or NEA subjects. English Literature NEA, geography fieldwork, D&T, drama, music, art and PE all have practical or coursework components that free resources cannot cover on their own. Most home educators sidestep this by sitting iGCSE (which mostly avoids coursework) or by choosing subjects without NEA.
• Ancient languages and specialist subjects. Free coverage thins out considerably. Free UK-aligned Latin is limited; free structured MFL even more so. A specialist tutor or paid course is often needed.
• MFL speaking assessment. GCSE modern foreign languages include a speaking component that has to be assessed by the entering centre. Free apps build vocab and grammar; the speaking component needs a real person.

Cognito is a full free platform for GCSE and iGCSE (and A-Level and IB for the sciences), which is why so many homeschool families use it as the backbone of their science and maths.

What you get for free at cognito.org: video lessons across GCSE and iGCSE Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Combined Science and Maths; topic-tagged notes and question banks; a custom quiz builder; past papers organised by topic for the sciences and maths; notes and questions for GCSE English Language, English Literature and Geography.

Boards covered include AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and Cambridge International, so it works for domestic GCSE or iGCSE. No sign-up is needed to browse video lessons; a free account tracks progress and enables custom quizzes.