Understand home education reviews

We select up to 10% of all home education registrations for review each year.

If you are educating more than one of your children at home, only one child's registration will be reviewed. Only provide evidence for this child when you are completing the review.

We may do a specific review if we find out parents are not meeting registration requirements.

You need to show that your home education program meets registration requirements. You can do this by:

• providing an overview of your home education philosophy
• describing your child’s interests and learning needs
• describing your learning program by either learning area or activity.

You may wish to provide details about any specific learning needs. This information is optional but can provide context to your educational program.

Evidence could include:

• a report describing the learning activities completed by your child
• your reflections in a journal
• app extracts
• samples of learning activities
• photos of learning activities or completed projects.

We don’t return any work samples or photos you send us. Make copies of all the evidence you are providing for your review, do not send us originals.

You can choose to have your review conducted by desktop. This is where you email your evidence to us and we review the information.

You can also hold your review by telephone or video conference. During our conversation, you can provide information about your child's education program, instruction, and how you meet the requirements. Together we'll decide if you need to send in evidence after our discussion.

We may contact you again if we need more information or evidence to understand how you meet the requirements.

Once we have reviewed your evidence, we will write to let you know whether you are meeting the requirements of registration.

If you have met the requirements, you will be removed from the review pool for the following 2 years. This applies to all children registered for home education in your family.

If you have not met the requirements, we will tell you what further actions you need to take.

If you fail to take these actions to meet requirements, we may cancel your home schooling registration.

In a report, you describe your child's educational program and record the frequency of delivery and the resources you are using. There are report templates for subject-based and activity-based learning approaches

• Report template by learning area (docx - 36.76kb)
• Report template by activity (docx - 36.61kb)

In an activity coversheet, you include the learning areas covered in an activity. It helps you to describe the activity in context with your child's educational program. You may need more than one cover sheet to demonstrate instruction across all learning areas.

• Activity coversheet (example and template) (docx - 44.13kb)

A weekly or monthly record can demonstrate that instruction is regular and efficient.

• Weekly record (example and template) (docx - 37.64kb)
• Monthly record (example and template) (docx - 35.12kb)

Our team collaborated with Victorian home educators to create these samples. Our reviewers also provided feedback on the samples. Meeting the requirements for review are specific to each individual case. These samples are for reference only.

• Review 1: Blog (pdf - 1.63mb)(opens in a new window) Submitting a blog extract provides a snapshot of activities over a period of time. It describes learning activities with supporting photo evidence.
• Review 2: Report (docx - 757.64kb) A written report can demonstrate how regular and efficient instruction is occurring. The evidence provided in the report (parent reflections, photos and evidence of work samples) can also demonstrate how learning areas are being substantially addressed.
• Review 3: Parent journal with photos (pdf - 1.65mb)(opens in a new window) Journal extracts can demonstrate that regular and efficient instruction is occurring. Detailed journal entries, supplemented with photos and samples of learning activities, can further demonstrate that learning areas are being substantially addressed.
• Review 4: Activity coversheets and monthly record (docx - 87.82kb)​ Samples of your child's learning activities accompanied by coversheets can show instruction across the learning areas and regular and efficient instruction, depending on the activity or detail given in the coversheet. If unsure, you can further demonstrate evidence of regular and efficient instruction by including a monthly or weekly record.