VIC
Homeschooling is legal in Victoria. Children aged 6 - 17 must be registered with the VRQA; Victoria’s home education regulator. You can start homeschooling at the beginning of the year when your child turns 6. You must register them by their 6th birthday. You can register up to 6 months before home school commences. Applications are normally assessed within two weeks but may take up to 28 days to be approved. Your child will legally be required to attend school until you receive your approval letter. If you need to remove your child from school urgently, you can ask the principal to approve an absence.
Each year up to 10 per cent of homeschooling families are randomly selected for review. If you are educating more than one child, only one child is selected for a review. You will be asked to show educational progress and evidence that the eight key learning areas are regularly and efficiently being addressed. Once you have been reviewed you will generally be exempt from the review pool for the following two years.
How to apply for Home Education Registration in Vic
Registration is required once in Victoria. Once you have been approved to homeschool you won’t need to apply again. Each consecutive year you will be sent an email asking if you want to continue with homeschooling. A simple response of yes or no is all that is required.
There are 4 steps to registration:
- Download the application form and complete each section
https://www2.vrqa.vic.gov.au/register-home-educate
- Collect the required documentation
You much attach the necessary documents to confirm your child's name, date of birth and your parental responsibility. Send in copies of the documents, not the originals.
- Submit a proposed learning plan for your child to the VRQA.
You need to create a learning plan which will explain how you will address the eight learning areas within your home school.
- Submit your application to the VRQA
Send your application as an email to home.schooling@education.vic.gov.au
Attach:
- your application form as a single .pdf file
- other evidence documents as photo or .pdf files
- your learning plan as a single .pdf file
How to Prepare your Educational Plan
We can do it for you . . .
Simply Homeschool offers support to write your Education Plan. This Registration Document can be purchased by members in our Registration Menu or the Resource Shop. You can join now if you would like to explore this option.
Alternatively, you can create your own Educational Plan. . .
Develop and provide a summary of the Educational Program for your child for the next 12 months. The initial ideas for planning your child's home education program will come from your own observations of your child and the goals you have for them.
You will need to provide a plan for how you will substantially cover the eight learning areas: The Arts, English, Humanities, Maths, Physical Education and Health, Technologies, Sciences and Languages. You can apply for an exemption from one or more areas if it is unreasonable for your child to receive instruction in any of these learning areas. You can briefly state your reasons why such as mental health, disability or special needs, future career/study needs, or any other reason you believe an exemption is required. You do not need a medical certificate to apply for an exemption.
The VRQA offers general information about planning a program and provides templates and completed examples for reference. You do not need to follow the VIC school curriculum or school levels. You can find information on preparing a learning plan here:
https://www2.vrqa.vic.gov.au/develop-home-education-learning-plan
Choose the format for your plan from the VRQA templates. The use of these templates is not mandatory, and you may choose to develop your own format. Time invested in developing a summary of the educational program will help you to address the registration requirements and importantly, provide you with direction for the learning year ahead.
We find the Subject-based learning template fits most easily with your Simply Homeschool Learning Plan. If you follow a more natural learning approach, then the activity-based template is also a good option. You can download these here:
You are welcome to copy and paste information from Your Family Learning Plan into the templates. If you are using other resources outside of Simply Homeschool, choose unit studies that will interest your child, and plan learning activities that will fulfil curriculum requirements. The learning activities that you plan can include documentaries, online research, writing tasks, visits to museums, shows and other cultural activities.