Home schooling and working age 16

[Autumnwindinthewillows]

My ds is homeschooled and has finished his GCSEs etc. He wants to start working part time but were unsure about working hours and how they apply to him as we don't have 'term time'. Does anyone know if he is still restricted to 2 hours per weekday? He doesn't reach school leaving age until 28 June.

Annoyingly, it's unclear. When asked about this, the government essentially said, Your guess is as good as ours: "In the case of a restriction which relates to the school day or a day on which the child has to go to school the Act does not deal with the position of home educated children."

I did used to allow my teen to work on weekdays, on an employed, self-employed and voluntary basis. (She tried lots of different things throughout her teen years.) Personally I was prepared to argue that this was not a "school day" for us. After all, we can choose to educate on any schedule we like, so education could be done on a Sunday instead of a Wednesday, for instance. We did autonomous education so the distinction was entirely theoretical for us.

However, I can well imagine that some employers might not be prepared to take a chance on how a judge woud rule if it came to court, and might prefer to be cautious, as the law is unclear. If you think it's okay, your son could just try approaching employers to see what view they will take.

I asked about this in Legal a couple of years ago, but I can't get the search to work on my device, I think it's called what are school hours, the long and short is pretty much what Saracen says it's not really covered in the legislation and you end up having to work within the rules regarding young people working hours.