Homeschooling in Australia: registration and learning plans

Home education is legal in every Australian state and territory, and in almost all of them it requires registration with the state or territory authority. That is the main structural difference from countries where you simply begin. In Australia the paperwork is the entry point, and doing it properly at the start saves a great deal of anxiety later.

Registration, in outline

The pattern across most states is similar even though the detail differs. You apply for registration, usually before or shortly after withdrawing your child. You submit a learning plan describing what you intend to teach and how. The authority approves registration for a period, often a year to begin with and sometimes longer once you are established. At renewal you provide evidence of what was actually delivered. What differs between states is how closely the plan must map to the Australian Curriculum, whether a review is done on paper or in person, how long registration lasts, and how much latitude there is for approaches that do not look like school.

Writing a learning plan that gets approved

1. Read your own state’s published guidance and any template it provides, then use its structure and its vocabulary. Reviewers read many of these and a familiar shape gets read charitably.
2. Cover the required learning areas explicitly, even if your approach is integrated. Name where each one lives in your program.
3. Describe outcomes, not just activities. What the child will be able to do, and how you will know.
4. Say how you will record and assess. Reviewers want to see that evidence will exist, not that everything will be tested.
5. Include the resources you will actually use, and be specific. Named texts, courses, tutors, groups and online tools read as real.

If your approach is natural learning or otherwise child led, describe outcomes in recognised terms without misrepresenting what you do. A six week self directed project on Roman engineering covering historical sources, scale drawing, measurement and a written presentation is honest and legible. He does what he likes is honest and illegible, and gets refused.

Review and evidence

At review, most authorities want to see that the plan was delivered and that the child progressed. Samples of work across the learning areas, dated, showing progression rather than volume. A few pieces per area per period is plenty. Photographs of practical work with a line of context written the same day, a reading list, and a record of excursions, groups and activities. Keep it as you go: assembling a review pack from a well kept log takes an evening, while reconstructing a year from memory takes a fortnight and produces something weaker.

Distance education and senior secondary

Distance education through a state school of the air or equivalent is a separate route from home education registration, with its own eligibility rules, and it means enrolment rather than home education. It suits some families very well and removes most of the flexibility that others are homeschooling for. For senior secondary, students who want an ATAR generally need to be enrolled with a provider that can deliver and assess the senior certificate. Home educated students also take other routes into tertiary study, including vocational qualifications, mature age or special entry pathways, and tertiary preparation programs. Decide which route by year ten, since senior certificate requirements are cumulative.

How Different Drums helps here

The app is not tied to any one national curriculum, which suits families building a plan around the required learning areas in their own way. Curricula are built with week by week checkpoints, goals, activities and materials on almost any topic and at any length, which is close to the shape a learning plan takes. The learning log records by subject and date, offline learning takes a line each, and education reports can be generated per child for any date range, which maps onto registration and review cycles. Printable worksheets and tests as PDFs with answers give you dated work samples across the learning areas.

Working level is set per subject rather than by age, and there is an AI tutor per child that explains rather than handing over answers, with parents able to read the conversations. Practice in arithmetic, maths, calculus, chemistry and physics comes from 200,000+ hand-verified questions; other subjects are AI generated and less reliable on very niche topics. Pricing is available in Australian dollars. Parent Only from GBP 9.99 a month, Parent + Child from GBP 9.99 per child a month. 14 days free, no credit card required. Different Drums is not an accredited school or an awarding body.