Homeschooling abroad: expat, military and travelling families

Homeschooling from a fixed address is a legal question with one answer. Homeschooling while moving between countries is a legal question with several answers at once, and families regularly assume the wrong one applies to them. This page is about working out which rules you are actually under.

Residence usually decides it

In most cases, education obligations follow where the child actually lives, not where the family holds passports. If you move to a country where homeschooling is not permitted, being a citizen of somewhere that allows it does not generally exempt you. There are exceptions worth checking: some countries treat foreign nationals on temporary visas differently from citizens, some allow enrolment in a foreign registered distance school as a lawful alternative to local enrolment, and status of forces arrangements can change the position for military families. None of these are safe to assume, and all of them are answerable in advance.

Check before you move, not after

• Is home education lawful for residents, and does it differ for foreign nationals or temporary residents?
• Is enrolment in an overseas distance or online school treated as satisfying the requirement?
• Does your visa category carry an education condition, and does it require a named school?
• Is there a registration or permission process, and does it have to be completed before arrival?
• What documents will you need in the local language, and will they need certification?

Some jurisdictions require permission in advance and treat a retrospective application badly. Arriving first and asking later is the single most common way families get into difficulty, and it is entirely avoidable. Overseas military postings add a further layer: the host country’s law, the terms of any status of forces agreement, and your own service’s education policies for dependants. Frequent moves also mean you may cross several US states or other jurisdictions in a few years, each with its own filing.

Worldschooling, honestly

Travel is genuinely educational and it is not automatically a curriculum. Six months across Southeast Asia produces extraordinary geography, history, language exposure and independence, and it produces no math progression at all unless somebody deliberately keeps math going. Two things fix most of it. Keep the sequential subjects, math and reading while reading is still developing, running at a low steady rate regardless of where you are, because gaps there compound quietly. And name the learning as it happens: a temple visit written up the same evening is evidence, and the same visit remembered in November is an anecdote.

Records that survive a move

• One continuous dated log by subject across all countries, never restarted at each border.
• External evidence above all: test results, qualifications, course completions, tutor reports, certifications. These travel well when your own records are questioned.
• A short written statement of your approach and what you cover, ready to hand over. Abroad, this does more work than at home.
• Digital and backed up in two places, since paper does not survive international moves.
• Work samples showing progression, dated at the time. Undated work is close to useless as evidence, and nobody remembers later.

If your child may enter a school system later, find out early what it will ask for. Some systems place by age, some by assessment, some by prior credits, and credit based systems are the ones that punish a gap in documentation.

How Different Drums helps here

It is used by families in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and beyond, and is not tied to any one national curriculum, which suits families following a different system, several, or none. The learning log records by subject and date in one continuous record across every move, and education reports can be generated per child for any date range, which maps onto most registration, review and re entry conversations. Curricula with week by week checkpoints can be built on almost any topic, including whatever is outside the window this month, which is how you turn travel into something a reviewer recognises.

Working level is set per subject rather than by age, which matters for children moving between systems that sequence differently, and each child can have an AI tutor that explains rather than handing over answers. Practice in arithmetic, maths, calculus, chemistry and physics comes from 200,000+ hand-verified questions, which keeps the sequential subjects moving even when nothing else is stable; other subjects are AI generated and less reliable on very niche topics. Pricing is available in GBP, USD, EUR, AUD and CAD. Parent Only from GBP 9.99 a month, Parent + Child from GBP 9.99 per child a month. 14 days free, no credit card required. Different Drums is not an accredited school and does not certify attainment.