Free Educational Websites for Children

The short answer

The free educational web is in great shape in 2026, arguably better than it has ever been. Whether you are filling the long summer holidays, a February half-term, or a rainy Saturday in Chorlton, there is a genuinely free, curriculum-aligned website for almost every subject and age, from Early Years (EYFS) through KS1, KS2, KS3 and on to GCSE.

If you want a quick free starter kit for most UK families, it looks like this: Oxford Owl and BBC Bitesize for reading, Topmarks and Oak National Academy for maths, Scratch and Code Club for coding, National Geographic Kids for science and curiosity, and CBeebies and Khan Academy Kids for little ones. The single biggest addition in recent years is Oak National Academy, a free, Department for Education funded platform that covers the entire UK curriculum.

Does a little holiday learning really help?

Before the list, a quick word on the why. Educators talk about summer learning loss, or the "holiday slide", the tendency for children's progress, particularly in maths and reading, to stall or slip back over long breaks. The Education Endowment Foundation, the UK's leading education research charity, has examined this evidence and has warned that long closures tend to widen the attainment gap, hitting disadvantaged pupils hardest.

It is worth being balanced, because the research is genuinely debated. Some studies suggest learning is slowed rather than truly lost, and the EEF itself notes that light-touch steps such as summer reading lists do not have a big impact on attainment on their own. So the takeaway is not to panic, nor to turn the holidays into a second term. A little light, regular engagement, twenty minutes of reading, a few maths games, a curiosity-driven afternoon learning about volcanoes, helps keep skills ticking over so children head back to school ready to go. The good news is that none of this needs to cost anything.

The best free learning sites, by subject

Here are the resources we would actually recommend to a parent, grouped by what you need. We have flagged the few that are not fully free, because being upfront saves frustration later.

Reading and early literacy

• Oxford Owl for Home offers a free eBook library for 3 to 11 year-olds, featuring the Biff, Chip and Kipper characters used in many UK schools. It is free, but you need to register a free parent account. The much larger school library is a separate paid subscription.
• BBC Bitesize is the heavyweight of free UK learning and revision, and it remains entirely free. It covers the full sweep of the curriculum across every key stage, with equivalents for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is the first place we send any UK parent.
• CBeebies is still free and lovely for the EYFS crowd, packed with games, crafts and recipes featuring familiar friends like Hey Duggee and the Numberblocks. There is also a free CBeebies preschool app built around the EYFS framework with no in-app purchases.

Maths

• Topmarks is free, UK-made and curriculum-aligned. The standout is Hit the Button for rapid-fire times tables, number bonds, doubling and halving (ages 6 to 11), with no registration needed to play in the browser.
• Coolmath Games is still free and a firm favourite for logic puzzles and maths games, with Coolmath4Kids aimed at younger children. It is a US site, so treat it as number confidence and problem-solving rather than precise UK-curriculum alignment.
• Times Tables Rock Stars is worth a clarification, because parents often assume it is free. It needs a subscription. If your child's school subscribes, your child can log in free at home with their school account; otherwise there is a low-cost family subscription. It is particularly useful for Year 4 pupils preparing for the Multiplication Tables Check.

Coding

• Scratch is the free, block-based coding language from MIT that powers most UK primary computing. Children make games, animations and stories, and there is a ScratchJr app for ages 5 to 7.
• Code Club is the UK-founded network of free coding clubs, now part of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, with free step-by-step projects you can do at home and a finder to locate a free club near you in Greater Manchester.
• Code.org offers free coding courses and the famous Hour of Code tutorials, a gentle, structured way into programming for all ages.

Science and curiosity

• National Geographic Kids (the UK site) is free, with animal fact-files, science, geography, games and quizzes. It is brilliant for curiosity-led learning across KS1 and KS2. The print magazine is a paid extra, but the website content is free.
• NASA Space Place is great for upper-KS2 children, with free space and Earth-science games, hands-on activities and short videos. For younger children, NASA Kids' Club is the gentler option (note the old web address has changed).
• Khan Academy offers free maths, science and more, and the separate free Khan Academy Kids app is excellent for ages 2 to 8. It is US-centric, so the maths labels will not always match UK terminology, but the quality is high.

Languages and the full curriculum

• Oak National Academy is the standout free addition. It is an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Education, offering free, curriculum-aligned lessons, videos, quizzes and worksheets across the whole curriculum from EYFS to KS4 and GCSE, with no paywalls, tiers or logins, on any device. If you take one new recommendation from this guide, make it this.
• Duolingo offers free language learning with a robust, ads-supported free tier, great for keeping up French, Spanish or German over the holidays and motivating from KS2 upward.
• BBC Good Food has a free kids' and family recipe section for some hands-on holiday cooking. It is run by Immediate Media rather than the BBC itself, so think of it as the brand rather than part of the BBC.
• BBC Super Movers is still free and active, with curriculum-linked active-learning songs for KS1 and KS2 maths and literacy, made with the Premier League. Perfect for combining movement with times-tables practice.

Phonics and early reading, explained

If your child is in Reception or Key Stage 1, phonics is the engine behind their reading, and it is one area where a little free practice at home pays off quickly. English schools teach systematic synthetic phonics, where children learn the sounds (phonemes) that letters and groups of letters make, then blend those sounds together to read words. The programme is split into phases, and most schools work through them from Reception into Year 1.

PhonicsPlay is the best-known free option. It gives unlimited access to a selection of games across all six phases, so you can practise the exact phase your child is on at school. Old favourites like Picnic on Pluto and Buried Treasure get children blending sounds and sorting real words from nonsense words, which mirrors the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check. The full library needs a paid membership, but the free games are genuinely useful on their own.

Pair it with the free eBooks on Oxford Owl for Home, which are banded by reading level so you can pick books that match your child's stage rather than guessing. A good rhythm is five to ten minutes of a phonics game, then reading a short eBook together, talking about the pictures and asking what might happen next. That little-and-often pattern beats one long, tiring session every time.

A free site for every key stage, from EYFS to GCSE

It helps to think in terms of key stages, because the right free site for a four-year-old is very different from the right one for a Year 11 pupil revising for GCSEs. Here is how the best free options line up across the UK key stages.

Stage (age)	Free sites worth starting with	What to focus on
EYFS (3 to 5)	CBeebies, Khan Academy Kids, PhonicsPlay Phase 1 to 2	Talking, listening, early sounds, counting, play
KS1 (5 to 7)	Oxford Owl, PhonicsPlay, Topmarks, BBC Bitesize	Phonics, reading fluency, number bonds, times tables
KS2 (7 to 11)	Oak National Academy, Topmarks, Scratch, National Geographic Kids	Times tables, writing, coding, curiosity-led science
KS3 (11 to 14)	Oak National Academy, BBC Bitesize, Duolingo, Khan Academy	Building subject knowledge, languages, study habits
KS4 and GCSE (14 to 16)	BBC Bitesize, Oak National Academy, Khan Academy	Exam revision, past-paper style practice, weak topics

One thing worth knowing about the older end of this table: for GCSE revision, BBC Bitesize is organised by exam board (AQA, Edexcel, OCR and so on), so it is worth checking which board your child's school uses and choosing the matching pages. Oak National Academy, meanwhile, publishes full lesson sequences rather than one-off pages, which makes it ideal for catching up after missed school.

The Multiplication Tables Check, and free ways to prepare

If you have a child in Year 4, you will hear about the Multiplication Tables Check (MTC), a short, statutory online check that almost all Year 4 pupils in England sit each summer. In 2026 the two-week window runs from Monday 1 June to Friday 12 June.

It is worth understanding how it works so you can keep it in proportion. Pupils answer 25 questions drawn from the two to twelve times tables, with six seconds per question and a three-second pause in between, and the whole thing takes only a few minutes. Crucially, there is no pass mark. The Department for Education designed it as a diagnostic check to help schools spot pupils who need more support, not as something to pass or fail. For context, the average score across all pupils in 2024 to 2025 was 21.0 out of 25, and around 37 per cent of pupils scored full marks.

Because the check rewards quick recall, free rapid-fire practice is exactly what helps. Topmarks Hit the Button is purpose-built for this, letting children drill a single times table until it is automatic, all for free with no login. If your child's school subscribes to Times Tables Rock Stars, they can practise free at home with their school login. Keep sessions short, two or three minutes a day, and focus on the tables your child finds hardest rather than the ones they already know.

Free help for SEND and additional needs

Plenty of the best free learning is built with accessibility in mind, and there are excellent free resources aimed specifically at children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). It is also worth knowing that the government's 2026 screen-time advice makes a clear exception: the limits do not apply to assistive technology.

• SEN Teacher has offered free special-needs teaching resources since 1999 and is used by hundreds of thousands of people. You can print and adapt worksheets for maths, literacy, communication and social skills, and many of the tools let you customise the content to suit your child.
• RNIB Bookshare provides accessible versions of curriculum and reading books, free to UK learners with a print disability, which includes sight loss as well as dyslexia, dyspraxia and autism. Books can be downloaded in formats that work with screen readers, large print and braille.
• The National Autistic Society offers free advice and guidance for parents and carers of autistic children, with practical information on learning, communication and routines.
• BBC Bitesize and Oak National Academy both build accessibility into their lessons, with clear layouts, captions and adaptive teaching designed to be followed at the child's own pace.

A few free, built-in tools help too. Most browsers let you zoom the whole page with Ctrl and the plus key, Windows and macOS both include free screen readers and text-to-speech, and many devices have free, dyslexia-friendly fonts and colour overlays. If you would like a hand turning these on, our local support team is happy to help.

Sites that have closed or moved on

If you bookmarked a few favourites during lockdown, a couple are worth crossing off so you are not left hunting for them:

• Education City has closed. Its owner retired the platform entirely on 1 August 2025, deleting all data and ending all contracts, and there is no replacement from the same provider. Oak National Academy is the natural free alternative.
• Shaun's Game Academy is defunct. It was a coding campaign built around a competition that closed back in 2014. For the same skills, use Scratch and Code Club instead.
• DK Find Out! has been reorganised into DK's wider learning pages and is no longer the reliable free destination it once was. National Geographic Kids and BBC Bitesize are the more dependable free alternatives.
• BBC's standalone children's history area has moved into BBC Bitesize and BBC Teach, which is where to find curriculum-aligned history now.

Getting the screen-time balance right in 2026

Educational sites are a good use of screen time, but they are still screen time, and in 2026 there is fresh official guidance to help you judge the balance. In March 2026 the Department for Education published new advice for parents of young children, developed with an expert panel led by the Children's Commissioner.

For the youngest, the government's advice is to avoid screen time for children under two, other than for shared activities like a video call with grandparents that encourage interaction and conversation. For two to five year-olds, it suggests aiming for no more than one hour a day, and keeping screens away from mealtimes and the hour before bed. The same guidance notes that 98 per cent of two-year-olds already watch screens daily, and that 28 per cent of children starting Reception cannot use a physical book properly, with some trying to swipe the pages. Separate guidance for children aged five to sixteen is expected in autumn 2026.

The quality of what is on the screen matters as much as the quantity. The advice favours slow-paced, age-appropriate content over fast, social-media-style video, and watching together and talking about what you see supports development far better than a child watching alone. That suits the sites in this guide, since the best are designed to be done alongside an adult. For more, see our guide to kids and tech.

Keeping children safe online

As a computer repair business, online safety is close to our heart, and no list of children's websites is complete without it. These are the authoritative, free UK resources we trust:

• UK Safer Internet Centre, a partnership of three charities, promotes the safe and responsible use of technology for young people and runs Safer Internet Day, with free tips and advice for families.
• Internet Matters is our go-to for practical, free, step-by-step guides to setting up parental controls on different platforms, including time and age limits and content blocks, with age-specific advice from early years to teens.
• NSPCC online safety offers clear, free advice and support to help your whole family stay safe online.
• Childnet is a long-running children's online-safety charity with separate, age-appropriate advice for children, parents and teachers.
• Thinkuknow, run by the National Crime Agency's CEOP Education team, provides free online-safety resources for children aged 4 to 18, their families and professionals. If you are ever worried about grooming or online abuse, you can report it through the CEOP Safety Centre.

You do not need expensive software for parental controls either. Microsoft Family Safety, free with a Microsoft account, provides content filtering, screen-time limits and location sharing across Windows, Xbox and mobile. One thing to know: its web content filtering only works in the Microsoft Edge browser, so it is best paired with your broadband provider's free network-level filters, which BT, Sky, Virgin Media and TalkTalk all offer. If you would like a hand setting any of this up on the family PC, that is exactly the kind of thing we help Manchester families with.

If you want a simple order to set things up in, this is what we suggest to families:

• Turn on your broadband provider's free network-level filters first, as they cover every device on your home wifi in one go.
• Set up free, age-appropriate parental controls on each device your child uses, including tablets and games consoles, and make sure the family computer is clean and protected. Our guide to free firewalls is a good start, and our virus removal service can help if something looks wrong.
• Agree simple family rules, such as no screens at mealtimes or in the hour before bed, and keep talking, so your child knows they can come to you if something online worries them.

How to get the most from these free sites

The websites are only half the story. How you use them makes the difference between learning that sticks and a frustrating afternoon. A few habits help.

• Little and often beats marathons. Twenty focused minutes most days does more than a two-hour session once a week, and it is far easier on everyone.
• Follow your child's interests. A child who loves dinosaurs will happily read, count and write about dinosaurs. Use that. National Geographic Kids and Oak are easy to steer toward a current obsession.
• Use the school's logins first. Many schools pay for Times Tables Rock Stars, Oxford Owl's full library or other tools, and your child can often use them free at home. Ask the class teacher before paying for anything.
• Sit alongside where you can. Even a few minutes of you watching and asking questions turns a game into a conversation, which is where a lot of the learning actually happens.
• Mix screen and non-screen. Do a maths game, then bake and weigh out ingredients. The screen is a starting point, not the whole activity.

A few common mistakes are worth dodging too. The biggest is treating "educational" as a free pass for unlimited screen time; the balance above still applies. The second is paying for something your child's school already provides, which a quick email avoids. The third is chasing too many sites at once, so pick one or two that fit your child now and add more only when a new interest calls for it.

Which free sites should you start with?

You do not need all of these at once. Pick one or two that match what your child needs right now, and add more as their interests grow.

What your child needs	Best free pick	Good to know
Reading (ages 3 to 11)	Oxford Owl for Home	Free, quick parent registration
Times tables and number bonds	Topmarks Hit the Button	Free, no login to play
Full curriculum, EYFS to GCSE	Oak National Academy	Free, Department for Education funded
Coding	Scratch and Code Club	Free
Science and curiosity	National Geographic Kids	Free website
Little ones (EYFS)	CBeebies and Khan Academy Kids	Free
Languages	Duolingo	Free tier with ads
Phonics (Reception and KS1)	PhonicsPlay	Selected games free across all phases
SEND and accessibility	SEN Teacher and RNIB Bookshare	Free for eligible UK learners

Free local learning across Manchester

You do not have to do all of this online or at home. Manchester's network of libraries is one of the best free resources in the city, and it pairs perfectly with the websites above, especially if you do not have a device or reliable internet at home.

Manchester City Council libraries offer free access to computers and the internet, free membership, and free holiday activities through the school breaks. Through the free BorrowBox app you can borrow eBooks and eAudiobooks with your library card. Over the summer, libraries run the Summer Reading Challenge, delivered nationally by the reading charity The Reading Agency, which sets children a fun reading goal and rewards them with stickers and a certificate. The 2026 challenge is themed Read to the Beat, all about the link between stories and music, and you can take part at your local branch or online.

It is a lovely, no-cost way to keep reading going through the summer, and a good excuse to get the children out of the house on a rainy Manchester afternoon.

How Manchester PC can help

None of this works if the family computer is too slow to load a learning site, keeps crashing mid-lesson, or is bogged down with pop-ups and dodgy software. That is where we come in. Manchester PC is a friendly, local computer and laptop repair team, and we help families across Manchester keep their devices running smoothly and safely for learning.

Whether you need a tired laptop speeded up with an SSD upgrade, a virus cleaned off, parental controls set up properly, or just a hand getting an old machine ready for the new term, we are happy to help. We offer free local collection and return across Manchester, so you do not even need to leave the house. Give us a ring on 0161 820 1992 or get a free, no-obligation quote and we will sort it out.