A thread for bumping up, to keep general information easily available.
The law in Scotland on Home Education is different from that in England. For full details, I'd recommend reading through the Schoolhouse site, but the basics are as follows:
If your child is attending a state school in the area, you must seek the consent of the education authority to withdraw them from school in order to home educate. To do this, you need to write to the Director of Education for your area, asking them to remove the child's name from the school roll. You will also have to provide outline proposals on your planned educational provision - you can either include this with your letter, or wait for them to ask, but it is quicker to include it. The local authority then has to consider whether there is any existing evidence indicating that there is good reason for refusing consent, eg child protection concern, and also whether there is evidence of the intention to provide "efficient and suitable" education. If there are no problems, they can in theory grant consent straight away, but certainly in most cases they should give a decision within 6 weeks.
You do not have to seek consent if your child has never attended state school in the area, or the school has closed down, or they have finished primary school but not started secondary.
Whether or not you have to seek consent, you will still have to give details of your educational provision, if asked by the local authority.