When can I register?
Registration is open for children between ages 6 and 17. The earliest you can commence registration is the beginning of the year your child turns 6.
What's required: the learning areas
To be registered for home schooling in Victoria, you need to provide regular and efficient instruction, which taken as a whole substantially addresses 8 learning areas:
- English
- Mathematics
- Sciences (including physics, chemistry and biology)
- Humanities and social sciences (including history, geography, economics, business, civics and citizenship)
- The arts
- Languages
- Health and physical education
- Information and communication technology, and design and technology.
The regulations do not elaborate on what needs to be covered in each learning area. You get to decide what to include, so you can best reflect your child's individual needs.
How to register
Registration is free and you only need to do it once. There are 4 steps to registration :
Assessing your application
We assess applications as quickly as possible. However, some applications may take up to 28 days for us to assess after receiving a complete application.
If your application is incomplete, we will ask you to provide more information. The 28 day assessment period starts when we receive a complete application.
When assessing your application, we consider all the relevant rights of the child. This is done in accordance with Victoria's Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.
For more information, see:
School enrolment during the application process
While we assess your application, the law says children aged 6–17 years must remain enrolled in school.
If your child is unable to attend school due to illness, stress, bullying, or other difficulties, please speak to your child's principal about your options regarding attendance. They must remain enrolled until your application is decided. With your consent, the principal is welcome to contact the VRQA if they have any questions.
If you are a family arriving from interstate, you will need to enrol your child in a registered school for 28 days while we assess your application.
Outcome of your application
We will write to let you know whether or not your child's registration has been approved.
Please be aware that if your application is incomplete, we will contact you for additional information. If we do not receive the information within 28 days, a decision will be made based on material available to us.
If your child has been refused registration, you may wish to consider the reasons for the decision, address any outstanding areas and submit a fresh application. You can submit a new application at any time.
Alternatively, you can appeal the decision. For information about making an appeal, see:
Maintaining registration
We will contact you toward the end of each year to ask if you intend to continue to home educate your child in the following year.
You will receive an email for each child registered for home schooling. The email links to automated processes that will continue or cancel your child's registration.
You must respond before 30 November.
If you haven't decided, continue your registration, and contact us in the new year if your child commences school and you wish to cancel.
If your child has turned 18 years old or will before the end of the year, their registration is automatically cancelled, and you will receive email notification of this.
Ensure to click the correct link and avoid accidentally clicking links while scrolling on mobile devices.
You must respond by clicking one of the following options:
(a) I will continue home schooling for student [Child name]
OR
(b) I will not continue home schooling for student [Child name]
Your response will be automatically recorded.
You will then receive a confirmation email. No further action is required.
If you don't receive a confirmation email, please contact us at home.schooling@education.vic.gov.au