Homeschooling in France:

Homeschooling in France is growing

Across Europe, more and more families are choosing to educate their children from home — for the flexibility, for travel, for wellbeing, or simply because it fits their child better than a traditional classroom.

In France, educating your child from home — known locally as Instruction en famille (IEF) — comes with its own rules, which we walk through below. Increasingly, families meet them by enrolling in an accredited online school, so their child still gets live teaching, structure, and real friendships.

If you’re exploring your options, here’s what you need to know — and how bina can help if you’d rather not figure it all out on your own.

Is schooling from home legal in France?

In France, instruction — not school attendance — is compulsory for every child aged 3 to 16. Educating your child at home, known as instruction en famille (IEF), is legal, but since the 2021 law that took effect at the 2022 school year it requires prior authorization from your local education authority (the DASEN, within your department's DSDEN) before each school year. The earlier simple-declaration system no longer applies.

Authorization is granted on one of four legally defined grounds: the child's health or disability; intensive sporting or artistic activity; family itinerancy in France or distance from any public school; or 'a situation specific to the child justifying an educational project' (motif 4) — the route most families who actively choose home education use, which requires a written educational project. Importantly, enrolling in a distance-learning provider does not change this: a child taught through any such provider — whether the regulated CNED, an unregulated private distance school, or an international online school — is still legally considered instruit en famille, so DASEN authorization is still required.

Once authorized, home education is monitored: the town hall (mairie) runs a social enquiry roughly every two years, and an academy inspector carries out at least one pedagogical inspection per year (which can begin from about the third month) to check progress against the national common core (socle commun). If an application is refused, you must first lodge a mandatory administrative appeal (RAPO) within 15 days of the written refusal, before you can take the matter to the administrative court.

What are the steps to school from home in France?

1. Confirm your child falls under compulsory instruction — Instruction is mandatory from age 3 to 16. Plan to have an IEF authorization in place for any child in that range before they begin learning from home.
2. Prepare your educational project and choose a ground — Most families who choose home education apply under motif 4, the 'situation specific to the child' ground, which requires a written educational project setting out methods, resources and schedule. Naming a structured online school such as bina as the core of that project helps show the plan meets the socle commun.
3. Apply to the DASEN between 1 March and 31 May — Submit your IEF authorization request (one per child) to your department's DSDEN through the official online procedure, signed by both parents holding parental authority. The DASEN must reply within two months of a complete file; silence after that counts as acceptance.
4. Enrol with your online school once authorized — With authorization granted, enrol your child in bina and begin live, teacher-led lessons from home. Keep enrolment records, attendance and your child's work to evidence progress.
5. Cooperate with the annual checks — Expect a mairie social enquiry about every two years and at least one yearly academy inspection assessing progress toward the common core. Reapply each spring for the following school year.

An accredited online school like bina makes much of this simpler: we provide the curriculum, the live teaching, and the progress records your authority may ask to see — so you can focus on being the parent.