Abstract: Many families turn to home education neighbourhood groups for support, resources and guidance. This paper will briefly outline the context of home education in the UK and US, describe three different types of home education neighbourhood group as communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), and examine how the members of these communities learn through participation in such groups. It will be argued, that although communities of practice have variable features, they all engage in a form of collective situated learning which helps transform the practitioners (Safran, 2008). Evidence from HE neighbourhood groups shows people of all ages learning through communities of people doing things together. This makes educational institutions unnecessary, to be replaced by self motivated, flexible, contextualised learning for people of all ages. In this way institutions concerned primarily with passing on the ideology of growth are redundant, to be replaced by principles emphasising self determination and flexible life paths, better suited to fostering a sustainable society.