Home school your child

Home schooling is where you take on responsibility for teaching your child. It's an alternative to your child going to a school.

There are certain requirements if you choose to home school.

Your responsibility

All children must go to school or be home schooled if they're between 6 and 17 years old.

When you decide to educate your child at home, you take on responsibility for:

• planning their learning
• teaching them
• assessing what they've learnt.

You should teach your child according to their specific needs, for example, if they have a disability.

What you need to do

1. Register your child with the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA)
2. Submit a proposed learning plan for your child to the VRQA.
3. Be approved to home school your child.

See the VRQA website section on home schooling for how to complete these steps.

The VRQA may occasionally check your child is being taught. If this happens, they will let you know in writing beforehand.

Learning plan

You must submit a learning plan before you can be approved to home school your child.

The learning plan is to help you think about what education will most benefit your child. It should include:

• what you will teach in the first year
• how you will cover the 8 learning areas
• when and where this will happen.

See the VRQA website for how to prepare a learning plan and see sample plans.

The 8 learning areas for the plan are:

• English
• Mathematics
• Sciences
• Humanities and social sciences
• The arts
• Languages
• Health and physical education
• Information and communication technology, and design and technology.

Services and support

See the Guide to home education in Victoria (DOCX - 294KB) for services and support to help you teach your child.

Combine home and school education

You can approach government schools to teach your child certain subjects or activities. This is called partial enrolment.

Read how to combine home and school education.

Complain

You can contact the VRQA if you have concerns about:

• the type of teaching given to a child who is educated at home
• the process for registering or regulating home education.

Regulation

Regulation of home schooling is outlined in the Education and Training Reform Regulations 2017.

The Victorian Home Education Advisory Committee provides feedback to us and the VRQA about the regulation of home schooling.