PDA and elective home education (EHE)

For some PDAer’s, traditional learning approaches can often cause distress. Things like early starts, strict uniforms, set timetables, inflexible curriculums and behaviour-based rewards can all increase anxiety. Home education is a chance to provide learning support and experiences that can truly help your PDAer to thrive. Focusing on special interests, collaboration, choice, novelty and flexibility in EHE is likely to give more positive results.

The suggestions below are just a starting point—there’s no right way to learn when you choose to home educate. Every child is different, so what works well for one person might not work for another. The key is to find what suits your family and your child (or children) best, and shape learning around that.

There are many ways to do this, and we’ve listed some PDA-friendly ideas below. Your child might prefer one method or a mix, depending on the subject. Their preferences might change over time. That’s why being flexible, adaptable, and listening to their needs is so important.

PDAers often need to see a clear reason for learning something. They find it easier to engage when they follow their interests or when the learning feels useful or important to them. That’s why starting with what your child is curious or passionate about is a great way to approach learning.

It’s also helpful to think about and accommodate your child’s individual learning style:

Many PDA children and young people who are home educated prefer to be self-taught (autodidactic) and/or learn naturally through everyday experiences. Direct or formal teaching approaches can intensify avoidance and increase their ‘fight, fight, freeze’ response. Some key pointers around this approach include:

Learning collaboratively on a one-to-one basis or in a small group with trusted people can work well for some PDA children/young people. If your child would like to learn in this way, some key pointers include:

Elective home education doesn’t have to replicate school or follow a specific curriculum, timetable or time frame and the flexibility of a more free-flowing approach to education, where learning opportunities are found in the moment, can work well for PDAers. Helpful pointers include:

If your child would like to follow a curriculum or aspects of one, some helpful pointers include:

Exams are not compulsory for electively home educated children and young people but your child can choose to do them as a private candidate – there’s more info on the Educational Freedom website (including links to exam boards).

If and how you record progress is up to you and your child. Records of work/activities/knowledge (e.g. photos, scrapbooks, written notes etc.) can help demonstrate progress and evidence skills and learning, but they aren’t essential. The most important thing is that your child is progressing, and you can look for signs of this through the interactions, conversations and activities they take part in.

All interests have learning elements, and it can be really motivating to engage and join in with your child’s enthusiasm – building their self-esteem and your relationship in the process. Learn together – as it is highly likely they can teach you something!

Below are some ideas and examples of how your child’s interests can help them broaden their knowledge and learn naturally about other topics.

Interoception is one of our eight senses: it’s our ability to notice our body’s signals, understand their meaning and react in an effective way. Many neurodivergent individuals have differences in interoceptive awareness, which underpins our emotions and behaviours. The Department for Education in South Australia has a range of helpful, free resources on applying interoception skills to learning, including this Ready to Learn Booklet and Kelly Mahler‘s website is also very informative.

For general guidance and legislation about elective home education (EHE) in the UK please visit your relevant Government website:

Organisations such as Educational Freedom, Education Otherwise, Home Education Scotland and Home Education Northern Ireland also offer information, guidance and support to home educating families in the UK (including the deregistration process). Other national and local home education support groups can be found online and on Facebook too and can be invaluable as a support network (groups suggested to us are listed below, under resources).

PDA Home Education is a third party run Facebook group specifically for people who are (or are considering) electively home educating a PDA child. It’s a helpful forum for sharing ideas and experiences and for supporting each other.

The resources available to home educating families are many and varied – this section aims to be a “hub” for families who are home educating PDA children and young people to find and share ideas. If you have any suggestions for helpful links please do get in touch

Some of these ideas may need a little PDA/personal adaptation (see above for further ideas on this) and please consider carefully if a resource will suit your child – everyone’s different so not all the resources listed here will suit everyone.

It isn’t necessary to invest lots of money in specific resources for home educating your child, there are lots of free resources available and it’s possible to use and adapt the things you already have around such as games, puzzles, technology, apps the internet, places of interest, libraries, YouTube tutorials TV/films/music, arts and craft material, people etc.

PDA Society advisor Clare Truman (Spectrum Space) has kindly put together a range of ideas for learning at home and information and ideas for using the DFE Functional Skills subject content in a home education context.

The following list is a mixture of other free and paid for resources. Many paid for platforms and services offer a free trial and/or discount for home educators and there are discount groups you can search for on Facebook which arrange group subscription discounts.