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.