Home education registration overview
In Queensland, parents can choose an educational option that suits their child’s learning needs, state or non-state schooling, distance education or home education. Selecting home education for your child involves supporting your child’s educational progress through a planned high-quality learning program. Queensland Home Education (QHE) can support you through the registration process to help you understand what’s involved.
QHE’s fact sheet also provides some introductory information about home education.
Ongoing home education registration
There are several steps to registering your child for home education with Queensland Home Education (QHE).
Before you start the registration process, it’s important to know that a child can’t be enrolled in a school and registered for home education at the same time. If your child is enrolled at a school, talk with the principal about your decision to end their enrolment and let the school know that you plan to register for home education.
To register please:
- Prepare your supporting documents: this may include making copies of your child’s birth certificate, Medicare card, any relevant Court Orders and preparing a summary of your educational program. More details about Court Orders are in the Application Form.
- Complete an Application for Registration for Home Education form: you can complete the form
online, or you can download the ongoing home education registration form (DOCX, 104KB) to complete your application digitally or print and fill in a hard copy of the form.
- Submit your application, with supporting documents:
Including clear, readable copies of your supporting documents allows us to review and process your application smoothly. Document copies can be attached as image files, digital pdfs or photocopies. You do not need to provide original or certified copies.
You will receive confirmation once you finalise your online application or QHE receives your email or post application. If you like, you can share the confirmation and QHE’s email address—homeeducation@qed.qld.gov.au—with your child’s school, so the principal can confirm the registration with QHE.
Ongoing registration: Your plan for learning (an ‘educational program summary’)
Part of applying for ongoing home education registration is developing an outline of your plan for your child’s learning and development in the coming year. You may develop this educational program summary yourself or choose to work with a registered teacher who can design and deliver your child’s program. Some parents may purchase a program from home education businesses.
Planning your child’s learning activities can be a rewarding part of home educating. For new parents, it may be difficult to know where to start to design an educational plan that reflects high-quality home education. Many parents learn about home education approaches as they are supporting their child’s learning.
At QHE, we see many different educational programs for home education. Children have different needs and families have different perspectives, so learning plans are often very distinct from child to child. We understand and regularly see learning plans may change over the year.
Your learning plan explains the kind of education that your child will receive at home, showing how this will meet your child’s learning needs. Your plan could:
- give some background information about your child’s learning needs and previous experience, such as their achievements, preferences or challenges
- include your aims or goals for your child’s learning for the year (you may want to include your child’s hopes too)
- provide a summary of the learning activities, topics and experiences you’d like your child to have
- explain why and how the topics and activities you’ve planned meet your child’s educational needs in a positive way
- describe how the learning environment supports learning and promotes wellbeing for your child
- outline how you will keep track of and respond to your child’s learning progress.
Your plan doesn’t need to include everything that you intend to do over the year. It’s a summary of how you will support your child’s learning.
QHE has developed some resources that may help you design your educational program. It’s important to know that these templates are designed as a guide and using them is completely optional. You can change them to suit your child’s needs and your approach to learning at home, or you can design your own learning plan.
While your child is registered, your learning plan provides a guide for you to support your child's learning and monitor their educational progress throughout the year. Whether you design your own home education learning plan, purchase a home learning program, or work with a registered a teacher, you need to register with QHE and show that your child receives high-quality learning that meets their educational needs at home.
Ongoing registration: What happens once I’ve applied?
Once you have lodged an application in the approved form with QHE, you will be provisionally registered and can begin home educating your child or children until QHE decide your application for registration.
When QHE reviews your application, the reviewing officer will look at your form and supporting documents to confirm:
- your child’s eligibility for home education by checking your child’s age, Queensland residency, that home education will occur mostly at their residence, and that your child is not enrolled at a school
- you are a parent, carer or guardian of your child who has parental responsibility to choose home education as a learning option that meets your child’s educational needs
- high-quality education for your child while they learn at home. QHE will read your planned learning experiences to check that they are positive, supportive, and aim to meet your child’s needs
- educational progress will be supported through learning that encourages your child’s educational development and growth during the year.
By law, QHE has 90 days to decide home education registration applications. While we aim to process applications as soon as possible before this deadline, in some cases it may take the full 90 days to finalise an application.
If your application is complete, you will be notified once it is processed and a decision has been made. If something is missing, QHE will contact you to ask for the information or documents needed to process your application.
If we need any additional details or documents from you, the 90‑day decision period will begin again once you provide that information.
Ending your child’s registration (Surrendering registration)
If your circumstances change or you choose a different educational option for your family, you can end your child’s home education registration at any time. This is called surrendering registration.
There are 2 ways to let us know you are ending your child’s home education registration:
- Online: Submit the
online form. Registration ends on the date you submit the form.
- Write to us: You can end a child’s registration by email or post. Registration will end either on the date we receive your request or you can choose a future date.
If you will enrol your child in a school, please include the name of the school your child will attend.
Temporary 60-day provisional registration
If you require short-term home education registration, you can apply for a provisional registration with QHE. This can provide a temporary registration of 60 days without submitting an educational program or annual report.
To apply for a temporary provisional registration, write to us (by email:
homeeducation@qed.qld.gov.au or post) and include:
- a statement that you are applying for a 60-day provisional home education registration for your child
- your name (and the second parent’s name, if applicable)
- your child’s full name, date of birth and Queensland residential address
- a statement confirming your child is not enrolled in a state or non-state school
- proof of your child’s age and your parental responsibility—usually a birth certificate.
If you are applying for provisional registration for more than one child, please submit an application for each child.
Queensland Home Education will notify you by email confirming that your child is registered for provisional registration as soon as we can—this often occurs within a week.
Your child will be provisionally registered for 60 days from the day you receive the confirmation email from Queensland Home Education.
If you submit an application for ongoing home education registration, you will be provisionally registered once you submit your application.
Need additional support?
If you have questions or need assistance, please contact us at Queensland Home Education: