Home Schooling Application NZ

Homeschool exemption NZ is managed by the Ministry of Education (MoE)  locally within your school district. You send in your homeschool application to the local office closest to you, a case worker is assigned, and the process usually takes about 6 weeks.

The Home Schooling Application NZ Process

The home schooling application NZ form asks parents to provide details on their child’s individual needs, educational approach or philosophy of the parent, what curriculum and resources they plan on using and how will they keep records.

This homeschool application is only required to be done once for each child and then a homeschool exemption NZ is granted.

Full details of what is needed for a home schooling application NZ can be found on the Government Education website.

Maintaining Your Homeschool Exemption NZ

Twice a year, you are sent a declaration form to ask of your intention to continue to homeschool in New Zealand. This form needs to be filled out in order to keep receiving the Home Education Supervision Allowance.

Overseas travel is permitted for homeschooling children, however the Home Education Supervision Allowance changes if you are overseas for more than 28 days.

Your homeschool exemption NZ expires if you enrol in school. However, a back-to-school trial of up to 10 weeks is permitted without the need to make another home schooling application.

Reviews of Home Schooling Application NZ

In cases when your homeschool exemption NZ is declined, you can reapply. You can also request to have your home schooling application NZ processed at a different MoE office than the one you originally applied to. However, if rejected, we recommend you seek some assistance for making your resubmission to ensure success on reapplication. Cynthia Hancox offers a homeschool application review service.

A formal Education Review (ERO) can be conducted by the Education Review Office. There is no specific timeline for these reviews, and they are not done routinely. Read more about the ERO process.

Preparing Your Home Schooling Application NZ

Preparing your home schooling application NZ is a big undertaking. For many people it ends up being a document of about 10 to 15 pages and there is a lot of detail you are expected to supply. Even confident teachers feel overwhelmed by the task at first. But don’t worry there is help and support available.

The NZ government provide a guide for filling out your NZ home school application but a lot of people find they need additional assistance and seek help from others.

Home Schooling Application Sections

The NZ home schooling application form is set out in sections.

Section 1: The first part of the form is just details about your child and general information.

Section 2: The second part of the form is the most daunting. It includes a list of requirements without much explanation of how much information they really want to collect. So let’s break it down for you here.

Philosophy of Education

Firstly, you explain your philosophy and approach to home education. This is where you would describe your homeschool method. For example if you were using a Charlotte Mason approach or unschooling you would mention it here. Here is an example of what you could write about your philosophy when using the My Homeschool Program:

“We’ve decided to build our learning programme around My Homeschool graded courses. They are based on the content and outcome statements of the Australian Curriculum, and they also include content that is unique to New Zealand.

My Homeschool’s main philosophy and method is Charlotte Mason’s literature-rich way of teaching at home. But they have also added a lot of different teaching ideas and materials that reflect a more modern way of looking at the curriculum.

We will try to make our home a place where people want to learn, and we will encourage learning that happens naturally. Our child’s learning is supported by the fact that he or she is free to explore areas of interest.

Subjects and Curriculum

Secondly, you explain what you intend to teach the core curriculum subjects.

You also need to reference and explain your homeschool resources.  This needs to be quite specific and it usually means you will need access to the materials or reference your online schooling resources so you can explain them. For more details on options for homeschool curriculum NZ read here.

Short and Long Term Goals

Thirdly, you need to explain your education goals both short term and long term. This only needs to be short. For homeschool exemption examples on a long term goal you might say:

“Our long-term goal is that our child gets a well-rounded, thorough education that they enjoy, and that they develop all the skills needed to gain the qualifications necessary to go to university. We hope that we will provide them with a broad feast of interests and subjects to explore, as well as instil in them good morals and values to carry forward through the rest of their life. It is our plan to educate them through to Year 11 with My Homeschool and then transition to Te Kura to complete NCEA to Level 3 for University Entrance.

However, whilst this is my child’s current wish to go to university, we will also explore and review their abilities and passions and evaluate our plans accordingly.”

Short term goals would include using this or that resource and state a specific time for completion. These short term goals need to be more specific than the long term ones. You can usually discuss these goals on a subject by subject basis as you mention a resource.

Topic Plans

Fourthly, a special project or topic plan needs to be prepared.

A homeschool exemption topic plan might look like this Year 3 (NZ) Topic Plan for Weather using My Homeschool resources and Charlotte Mason ideas.

When preparing a topic plan you can also access ideas from education websites. For example you could have a topic plan on: NZ Government,  Matariki or an aspect of NZ history.

There is no set way of how to prepare and write your homeschool application and you don’t need to stick to traditional topics. Here are a few homeschool exemption examples from unschooling families with topic plans or projects included:

• Charlie’s exemption application example
• Luna’s exemption application example
• Sandra Dodd exemption application example.

Record Keeping and Assessment

Fifthly, you describe how you will maintain your records and achievements. Will you write a diary, do term reports, develop a portfolio?

This would be a homeschool exemption example for a Year 1 child at My Homeschool.

“We will check our child’s progress using the assessment tasks and checklists that the My Homeschool programme gives us. Also, because we will be working closely with our child, we will be able to see improvements in reading and writing by watching and listening to them. By listening to them read, we can assess how quickly they read and how they use strategies to figure out what words mean. By reading passages out loud and then talking about them, we’ll be able to see how well they can listen and understand. We will keep track of the books our child reads to and with us.

We also plan to keep a portfolio of work they have finished, and we will complete the Term Reports provided by My Homeschool to maintain a record of learning and progress. We will be able to compare these samples over time to see how their mathematics, spelling, handwriting, grammar, and punctuation have improved, as well as how their writing skills have grown.”

Here are some homeschool documentation suggestions.

Setting Up A Timetable

And the last requirement is how you schedule your homeschool teaching. They call it ‘regularity’. This is usually in the form of a weekly plan or timetable. For the purposes of the homeschool application exemption this will need to be fairly detailed, even if you normally wouldn’t be that rigid.

See an example of our Charlotte Mason Schedule here.

My Homeschool Exemption Help

At My Homeschool we want to make it as easy as possible to write your homeschool exemption application NZ, so we have partnered with Cynthia Hancox to help NZ families get their exemption completed. 

She has written us A Brief Guide to Completing a New Zealand Home Education Exemption Application and you will also find her NZ templates in all our graded courses.

We don’t do your home schooling applications for you but we do guide. That means there is no wait, you can start working on your homeschool application today.

Cynthia’s guide combined with our detailed Word templates for each grade, means 75% of the homeschool exemption application is done. We take the stress and worry out of your home schooling application NZ. And as far as we know, we have a 100% success rate when families use our plans and templates as we direct them.

Completing your home schooling application NZ with our templates is easy and it typically takes about 3 – 5 hours to complete. Cynthia also offers a program review service  for a fee if you want it checked before you send it off.

To help with your homeschool record keeping at My Homeschool we also provide the following record keeping resources for each grade:

• Term report templates that are mostly done; you just need to add a few details. These can be used for portfolios, a record of learning and as an assessment tool.
• A week-by-week planner that you can print off, with places to make notes (no need to keep a diary)!!
• Prompts and reminders to collect work as part of your child’s portfolio.
• End of year Certificate of Completion for our Full Primary programs and our second semester high school programs.

Are you interested in using My Homeschool to educate your child? Why not take a look at our homeschool kits for each grade!