Finding homeschool groups near you in the UK

One of the first questions new home-ed families ask is a practical one: where are the other families? The UK home-ed community is much bigger than it looks from the outside – DfE's autumn 2024 census counted around 111,700 children in elective home education in England, roughly 1.4% of the school-age population, and 153,300 children spent at least part of the 2023/24 academic year home educated. In most towns of any size, there's already a network. The trick is knowing where to look.

This is a directory-style guide to the main entry points: national charities, Facebook groups, local networks, and the venues (forest schools, museums, activity providers) that run home-educator sessions.

Three UK-wide organisations sit at the top of most home-ed families' bookmarks. Each is a slightly different beast.

Education Otherwise (EO) is the biggest. It's a registered charity (no. 1055120), describes itself as operating for 50+ years, and runs a helpline on 0300 124 5690 (Mon–Fri 10:00–18:00, Sat 11:00–14:00), plus email advice, legal guidance and member forums. UK family membership is £17/year, funded entirely from members' subscriptions. Members get a local support-group directory, quarterly newsletter, and supplier/venue discounts. If you join one thing at the start, EO is a sensible default.

HEAS (Home Education Advisory Service) is the older-established advice charity. It's smaller than EO, more focused on the advice-and-guidance side, and publishes helpful material on things like School Attendance Orders. Worth knowing about if you're navigating something knotty with your local authority.

Home Education UK (home-education.org.uk) is a public information hub rather than a membership charity. It hosts legal guidance PDFs (the well-known "Elective Home Education Legal Guidelines" document lives here) and forums. Good for reference reading; not the primary community route.

Most day-to-day connections happen on Facebook. The two biggest UK-wide groups are Home Education UK (reported at 32,000+ members) and Homeschooling UK (21,000+ members, second largest, with district lists across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). Both are private groups – you request to join and answer a couple of questions.

There's a long tail of smaller groups too: Educational Freedom Home Education, Friendly Home Education and Home Schooling HELP, plus dozens of regional groups ("Home Ed North Yorkshire", "Home Educators of Bristol", and so on). The regional groups are where most meetups get organised – Wednesday park meets, weekly co-op sessions, upcoming museum trips.

A practical tip: join two or three groups. One national for general advice, one regional/city for local meetups, and one interest-specific if there's a good one for your child's age or approach (e.g. autism home-ed groups, unschooling groups, GCSE prep groups). Numbers on Facebook fluctuate and shouldn't be taken as exact, but the direction of travel is clear – these are large, active communities.

Mumsnet's Home Education board sits under its Talk boards and gets steady use for practical questions – deregistering, curriculum, socialisation, dealing with LA officers. It's not a directive source, but it's a reasonable place to search when you're weighing up a specific worry. Threads tend to be candid.

Reddit's r/HomeEducationUK is smaller but active, and useful for quick UK-specific questions. Both are worth knowing about even if Facebook ends up being your main channel.

Once you're in a regional Facebook group, you'll see the shape of the local scene. In most areas it looks something like:

A weekly park meet – free, drop-in, all ages. Often the entry point for new families.

One or two co-ops – groups of families sharing teaching by subject expertise. Meetings are typically weekly for two to four hours. Some are structured academic co-ops (core subjects, curriculum-led), some are enrichment co-ops (art, music, languages, science practicals). More on how these work in a companion article.

Ad-hoc trips – museum days, farm visits, castle trips, sometimes organised by one family, sometimes by a group.

Activity classes with home-ed slots – gymnastics, swimming, drama, martial arts. Weekday daytime provision aimed specifically at home-ed families.

There's no UK-wide census of how many co-ops exist and where. Your regional Facebook group is the fastest way to find yours.

Many forest schools run dedicated home-ed sessions during weekdays. Format varies – some are drop-and-go, some are parent-and-child, most are outdoors in most weathers. Fees typically run £8–£15 per session, sometimes booked as a half-term block.

There's no central UK register of forest schools with home-ed slots. The Forest School Association (forestschoolassociation.org) has a member directory that's a useful starting point, and your local regional Facebook group will know which providers run home-ed sessions locally. If you're outside a big city, forest school is often the most consistent weekly community activity available.

Most major UK museums run "Home Educators' Days" – workshops or discounted-entry sessions timed for weekday daytimes and often themed around a KS2 or KS3 topic. Frequency varies by venue.

Worth checking directly:

Natural History Museum (Kensington) – regular home-ed workshops, usually free but booked in advance.

Science Museum (South Kensington) – runs home-ed sessions across its exhibitions.

National Trust – many properties do home-ed programmes, especially around KS2 history topics.

English Heritage – castles and historic sites often run home-ed workshops.

Regional museums (Manchester Museum, Bristol Museum, Kelvingrove in Glasgow, National Museum Cardiff, National Museums NI) all run home-ed sessions or discounted days.

Check the venue's website directly. Home-ed programming is often listed under "schools" or "families" rather than as a headline offer.

Home-ed enrichment activities range from free (park meets, museum days, library groups) to £500+/year if you're paying for multiple weekly commitments. Most families sit somewhere in between. The free stuff is often the most valuable – it's where families find each other, and where children find friends. Paid classes come and go; the community that runs the park meet week after week tends to be the anchor.