Post-16 Child Benefit now more accessible to HE teens!

[Saracen]

Hot off the press, this great news (quoted with permission from Education Otherwise):

"The Child Benefit (General) Regulations 2006 has been amended by the Child Benefit (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2025.
This amendment removes the requirement for home education to have commenced pre 16 for a child remaining in home education post 16."

More details will follow on the EO website. I will explain a bit more here now.

Until now, there were these two issues relating to Child Benefit and post-16 home education. Like young people studying at college, teens who were over "Compulsory School Age" (basically end of Y11) could qualify for their parents to keep receiving Child Benefit.

BUT 1) the young person had to have begun home ed before that point. Kids who left school to start HE at 16 didn't qualify. And 2) even if they had been HE when younger, if a young person tried college, didn't get on with it, and left to resume home education, their parents would lose CB.

Now those restrictions are gone.

I think this change may have been in the pipeline for a while. Universal Credit never had any such restriction, though many home educators wrongly believed it had.

This will be welcome news particularly for families whose young people have struggled through to the end of Y11 at school with mental health issues and now need a different approach other than college.

Also, some home educated kids - especially ones who are neurodiverse - may want to try college but are unsure whether it will work out for them. They now have the safety net of knowing they can return to home education if they need to, without it affecting the family's finances.

This is really good news thanks for highlighting