What is happening to homeschool registration in NSW? 

As of August 2026, NSW Homeschooling is nearly halfway through a two year reform process that began in September 2025 with the NSW Auditor General’s (AG) Performance Report into Alternative and Home Schooling. According to that report the Department of Education has two years to respond by September 2027. 

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The recent “Have your say” run by the Department of Education (closed 10 August 2026) was one step in the reform process. All of the Department's planned steps are outlined in the Secretary of Education’s letter  dated 19 September 2025 (refer to Appendix 1 of AG’s report). 

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The Department’s process of reforms covers each of the Auditor’s recommendations which HEA, along with other selected stakeholders, is participating in. Our experience so far is that our submissions have made very little difference to the draft Policy and Procedures published by the Department on 27th July 2026. The publication of these drafts was a defining point, approximately mid-way through the 24 months process. Before these documents were published, we couldn’t be sure how much the Department was willing to incorporate our submissions. Now we know! 

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As we approach the September 2026 mid-point a 24 month process, the HEA Management Committee has chosen to campaign for implementation of the  Auditor’s home schooling recommendations,  and set four priorities:

Priority 1 – HEA has created a baseline data set against which progress towards achieving the outcomes recommended by the Auditor General can be measured. By comparison the Department’s relevant data is either not available (not transparent) or as the AG’s report says is “incomplete” and “likely…skewed”. It is vital to have transparent data about registration processing times, reasons for homeschooling and registration experiences. 

Priority 2- HEA will keep pushing the Department to expedite registrations. This is a requirement of the Act, it is the Department’s responsibility and it is stressful for law abiding citizens to see their waiting times and uncertainty increasing while the Department is adding more requirements (See Table 1, item 2c). 

Priority 3 –The Secretary of Education has committed to co-design a quality assurance framework with families.  HEA has educational experts in homeschooling, ready to start on this important work. We are concerned that the first workshop is not scheduled by the Department until late November 2026 , 14 months into a 24 month process. We are further concerned, based on observed deficiencies at the child welfare workshop held in February 2026, that agreement on the availability of data, professional standards, methodology and representations should commence immediately. 

Priority 4 - HEA made submissions to the Department in June 2026 for a positive opening to their new home schooling policy, using language from the Education Act to say: 

 "The Education Act states that the education of a child is primarily the responsibility of the child’s parents, and a principal object of the Act is to allow children to be educated at home." 

A summary of the Auditor’s recommendations along with the Department’s and HEA’s response are listed in Table 1 below.