How do home educated students exam results compare to classroom-based students?
A natural question for a parent thinking about home educating their children is what effect it will have on their child’s education and exam results.
Unfortunately, there is no national UK dataset comparing the exam results, so it’s impossible to make a direct comparison between the exam results of home educated vs classroom educated children.
Children in state schools are tracked through the National Pupil Database, which records attainment of pupils in schools at every key stage. For more information on this, check out our ‘Guide to Progress 8’ article. However, home educated children sit outside this system.
As the Centre for Social Justice noted in its 2022 report ‘Out of Sight and Out of Mind: shining a spotlight on home education in England’, we are an international outlier in this respect, as oversight and assessment of educational progress for home educated children is commonplace across Europe.
Therefore any claims online asserting that home educated students either outperform or underperform national averages is likely to either be drawing on research from the United States, citing small qualitative UK studies, or overstating what the evidence actually shows.
The research that does exist - such as this ‘Homeschool Start Guide’ suggests academic outcomes from home education are broadly comparable to, or better than, mainstream schooling for children in structured programmes - but the research base, particularly for the UK, is thin.
So, while we can’t directly compare like-with-like, we can look at what each assessment looks like for home educated students, where national benchmarks currently sit, and what the evidence of strong outcomes does show - including from our own students.
The 11+
The 11+ is open to any child and acts as an entrance exam for selective schools.
Home educated students can enter by registering directly with their local authority or grammar school consortium - no school affiliation is required. The exam is sat by children at the start of Year 6.
The 11+ is tough. Partly it’s the content, but also the 11+ is the first exam children encounter. This is reflected in the results, where roughly only 30-35% of those who sit the exam pass.
However, with the right preparation, you can give your child the best chance to beat those odds. For home educated families preparing for the 11+, we offer a year-long bespoke 11+ preparation course, plus we cover the full Year 5 UK curriculum in English and Maths.
Year 6 SATs (KS2)
KS2 SATs are taken by state school Year 6 pupils each May, covering English (reading, grammar, punctuation and spelling) and Maths. Rather than providing students with a qualification, the Year 6 SATs are used to set - and measure - school performance. As such, home educated children do not sit KS2 SATs.
For context on the national picture: in 2025, 62% of pupils met the expected standard across reading, writing and Maths combined, up from 61% in 2024 - but still below the pre-pandemic figure of 65% in 2019.
Because home educated children sit outside this system entirely, no direct comparison between home educated and classroom educated students at KS2 is possible.
However, the content covered in Key Stage 2, builds the foundations students will need ahead of moving up to Key Stage 3 and ultimately on to their GCSEs. Our Year 6 English, Maths and Science courses cover everything children will need to step up into Key Stage 3 and on to their GCSEs.
GCSEs
GCSEs are where the comparison becomes easier - although there is another gap in the data - and maybe most meaningful.
Home educated students sit GCSEs as private candidates at registered exam centres. GCSE exams sat privately are identical to those sat in schools. They’re marked to the same standard and results directly comparable. (If you need it, our guide to sitting GCSEs privately covers the practical process in full).
You might expect, then, that Ofqual or the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) would publish results data for private candidates separately from school-sitting candidates, but they don’t.
Instead, Ofqual's centre-type data breaks GCSE outcomes down by school or college type: academies, comprehensives, independents, and so on. Private candidates sit at registered exam centres and their results are absorbed into whichever centre type they sat the exam in, with there is no separate private candidate data published. The Joint Council for Qualifications also doesn’t publish any results data for students who chose to sit the exam privately.
In short: the same structural gap that prevents national comparison of home educated attainment broadly also prevents any published comparison of private candidate GCSE grades against the national average. The data isn't being withheld - it simply isn't collected in a way that allows the comparison to be made.
What we do have is the national GCSE results benchmark. In 2025, 21.8% of all GCSE grades were at 7 and above, and 67.1% coming in at grade 4 and above.
In comparison, 55% of MyEdSpace students achieved grades 7-9. Meanwhile, a massive 51% of GCSE Maths MyEdSpace students achieved grades at 7-9 - more than double the national rate. These outcomes apply equally to home educated students using the platform as to school-attending students using it alongside their lessons.
If you want results like these for your child next summer, explore our GCSE courses today:
A-levels
As with GCSEs, home educated students sit A-levels as private candidates, to identical marking standards, with results accepted by universities through UCAS on exactly the same basis as school-sitting students. And, as with GCSEs, private candidate A-level outcome data is similarly not published separately from school-sitting candidates.
The same pattern of MyEdSpace students overachieving compared to their peers is also seen at A-level. 67% of A-level Physics students achieved A or A*, compared to a national average of 32%. Plus, 45% of A-level Biology grades achieved A or A*, almost double the national average of 28%.
Then, with their improved results, 55% of A-level students went on to be admitted to Russell Group universities, slightly over double the national average of 27%.
Finally, 100% - that’s worth repeating, 100% - of A-level Maths students completing 15+ homeworks achieved A/A*. 100%.
Explore our A-level courses:
What conclusions can be drawn from the available data
Home educated students who take GCSEs and A-levels sit exactly the same exams as their school-educated peers, marked to the same standard. In effect, the exams don't know - and don't care - how, where, or by whom, a child was taught.
The available data doesn't allow a clean national comparison, for two reasons: home educated students sit outside the National Pupil Database, and private candidate outcomes are not published separately from school-sitting candidates by any of the main data publishers.
That said, the evidence that does exist suggests structured home education can support strong academic outcomes. And for home educated students learning through MyEdSpace's live lessons, the results speak for themselves.
Get ahead and stay ahead this year
Whether your child is getting started with Year 5, preparing for the 11+, heading towards their KS2 SATs in Year 6, or moving through KS3 in Year 7, Year 8, and Year 9, starting their GCSEs or their A-levels, now is the time to get ahead.
The secret to achieving academic success in the UK? Studying with top-quality teachers and former examiners, handpicked for their ability to make things click for their students and working hard. Do that and results follow. This year, it's your child's turn to get ahead and stay ahead.
And, it’s more affordable than you might think. With us, you can get a full year of expert teaching for less than a few classes with the average private tutor.