A homeschool spreadsheet is a brilliant place to start — and a painful place to stay. Here's an honest look at where each one wins, for families at every age and stage, from early years to GCSEs.
14-day free trial • No credit card required • Your data exports to CSV/XLSX any time
We're not going to pretend spreadsheets are useless. For some jobs they're great.
Google Sheets or Excel cost nothing extra, and you almost certainly already have one open.
A blank grid bends to any system you can imagine. If your approach is unusual, nothing stops you.
Email it, print it, drop it in a shared folder. The file is yours and it's portable.
The cracks usually show around term two — and right before a Local Authority review.
Every column, tab and formula is yours to design and maintain. There are no GCSE specifications waiting inside — you'd have to type out every AQA, Edexcel or OCR topic yourself. Homeducate loads the full topic breakdown for each subject automatically.
A spreadsheet lists what you've done, not what's left. Gaps stay invisible until a past paper finds them. Homeducate tracks coverage topic by topic, with a progress bar per subject that shows exactly what's complete, in progress or not yet started.
Photos of completed work end up scattered across your phone while the spreadsheet only holds text. Homeducate attaches photos to each work-log entry, so the evidence and the record are the same thing.
Turning rows of data into something a Local Authority officer will read takes hours of copying, tidying and printing. Homeducate generates a narrative Local Authority report and PDF portfolio — timetables, hours, coverage and evidence — in one click.
More children usually means more tabs, more copy-paste and more chances to break a formula. Homeducate handles up to five students in one family account, each with their own subjects, timetable and progress, plus a parent dashboard across all of them.
The honest version — including where a spreadsheet holds its own.
| What you need | Homeducate | Spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|
| Free to use | 14-day trial, then £6.99/mo | ✓ |
| Total freedom to design your own layout | Flexible, within structure | ✓ |
| Pre-loaded GCSE specs (AQA / Edexcel / OCR) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Topic-by-topic coverage tracking | ✓ | Manual |
| Automatic study-hour totals | ✓ | Manual formulas |
| Photos of work attached to each entry | ✓ | ✗ |
| Up to 5 children in one place | ✓ | More tabs, more upkeep |
| One-click Local Authority report & PDF portfolio | ✓ | ✗ |
| Mock-grade tracking against target grades | ✓ | Manual |
| Separate, simplified login for each child | ✓ | ✗ |
| Export to CSV / XLSX (no lock-in) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time spent on admin each week | Minutes | Hours (and rising) |
Want to try the structured approach for free first?
Also weighing up paid apps? Read Homeducate vs cheap all-in-one home education apps.
Yes, and it's a perfectly good place to begin. It becomes a chore as records grow — you build every column by hand, there are no GCSE specs built in, photos live elsewhere, and turning it into something a Local Authority officer can read takes real effort. Homeducate keeps the flexibility but does the structure, totals and reporting for you.
No — it's a purpose-built record system. Pre-loaded GCSE topic structures, automatic coverage and hour tracking, evidence photos, up to five children, and one-click Local Authority reports are all things a blank spreadsheet can't do on its own.
You don't need to back-fill everything. Set up your subjects and timetable, then log work from today — the history builds itself. Keep your old spreadsheet as an archive, and remember Homeducate exports to CSV and XLSX so nothing is locked in.
A free template costs nothing up front but costs time every week, and it can't produce coverage tracking, evidence photos, automatic totals or a Local Authority-ready report. Homeducate is built for exactly those jobs, from £6.99 a month with a 14-day free trial.
Try Homeducate free for 14 days and see how much lighter record-keeping feels.
Start Your Free Trial14 days free • No credit card required • Setup in 5 minutes