Home Education

One of the questions I’m asked most often by home educating parents is some version of this: how long will it actually take? Sometimes it’s “how long before they can have a real conversation?” Sometimes it’s “how many years before they’re fluent?” And sometimes it’s a slightly worried “we’ve been learning for a while and they still can’t really speak it — are we doing something wrong?”

The first time a home-ed mum asked me this, I genuinely didn’t have a confident answer. This was years ago, not long after I’d started teaching from my kitchen table in Cheshire, and she’d just found me through a home-ed Facebook group. “Can she even sit the exam if she’s not in school?” I remember going away and actually researching it properly before I got back to her — private candidate registration, exam boards, exam centers, the lot. Turns out the answer is a very clear yes. But I understand completely why it doesn’t feel obvious from the outside. So let’s clear it up properly, because I still get some version of this question most weeks.