Home education and universal credit

[Inrealneedofadvice]

Hi,

I am considering to home educate my dd after not being able to attend school, not sitting GCSEs and several other issues. My dd is nearly 17 and I am currently receiving universal credit along side working. I will be able to home educate along side working but not sure if I will still receive universal credit. Does anyone have any clear information on this please?

Yes - you need to update child benefit as you can get this till your dd is 19 and in some circumstances 20. You will then still get child element UC

CB Will want to know that the education you are offering is full time and non advanced. For example working towards GCSEs and you don’t have to give an exact date or which GCSEs. For full time the rules are different for SEN and non SEN dc as those with SEN may do less hours

The previous posters are right.

Full time means at least 12 hours per week. It can be less if the child's disability or illness means they are doing all they can manage, but TBH it strikes me as simpler to include all the informal learning your child is doing, as that will certainly be at least 12 hours when you include all their hobbies and whatever they are learning in daily life. For example, you can list such subjects as cookery, DIY skills, art, music, PE.

Non advanced means basically lower than university level - if she were, say, studying for an Open University degree then she should use Student Finance instead. So as @DecisiveAction says, you can say "working towards" GCSE to give them a clear idea what level she is at so they know it's non advanced.

Child Benefit will ask for details of what she's studying. Ongoing entitlement to CB should normally be accepted by UC as proof that she should also qualify for UC Child Element.

If she remains in qualifying education, UC child element can be claimed until August after her 19th birthday. Child Benefit is until the day before her 20th birthday.

So what you need to do now is tell both CB and UC that she is a young person continuing in education. I think it's a change of circumstances. Both benefits would normally continue until the end of August regardless, before ceasing for teens who leave education. You want to ensure both have been sorted by then in order not to have them paused. UC staff are often poorly trained, so if they say no then you may need to send it to a decision maker - seek advice from a home ed organisation.

Thank you veru much everyone, it will indeed be English, Maths and life skills like cooking, money handling etc. Then hopefully once "caught up" the open university or something similar.

What does he need to study how etc and how do u provide evidence

What schemes aged 17 can my son do which keeps him on my uc claim.

@Ska1917 you don't need a "scheme", though you can include formal programmes of work such as enrolling him with an online school if you want. It is entirely up to you and your teen to decide what subjects to do and how. Talk to him about his ambitions for the future and come up with a plan together for how to work towards that. As I said earlier, it just needs to be "non advanced" and add up to at least 12 hours per week.

The evidence will be your description of what he is learning. Child Benefit will ask for details of this, and then your ongoing entitlement to CB would normally be accepted by UC as proof that you still qualify for the Child Element of UC. Child Benefit will ask you to list subjects including how many hours per week he is doing each and what level it is.

If you have any difficulty with either Child Benefit or Universal Credit, I recommend getting help from a home ed charity such as Education Otherwise. UC staff in particular are known to be poorly trained and may incorrectly reject your claim, so it is helpful to be able to quote their own regulations back at them and be prepared to go to a decision maker if they've made a mistake.

This is interesting as when I looked into this a couple of years ago it was only paid to post 16s if they were already registered as home educated prior to year 12.

i would double check that.

Yes, you were given the correct information. That changed last year, and now there is no requirement for a young person to have been home educated while still a child. See Fiona Nicholson's excellent EdYourself website, which is great for up to date information and references to original sources.

edyourself.org/child-benefit/

Well that’s really good news as I remember how nail biting it was sending mine off to sixth form college after being home schooled with the knowledge if it didn’t work out I’d lose my UC for her.

Really pleased that’s no longer the case, thanks for the info.

(she ended up smashing her A levels and has just started uni if that gives you hope, op)