Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many children are not registered for school in the last year in which statistics are available for.

Information is collected from local authorities in England on a termly basis on how many children they have recorded as being in elective home education (EHE) or who are children missing education (CME). On the census data for the 2025/26 autumn term, local authorities reported 126,000 children in EHE and 34,700 CME.

As there is currently no legal requirement for parents to inform local authorities that their children are not in school, this information is based only on those parents of which local authorities are aware.

As part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we are introducing a requirement for every local authority in England and Wales to hold compulsory Children Not in School registers.