|
Contents This site Home school Resources |
NZ Legal & Administrative Issues
This page introduces the government's requirements
for home education. Home educators often interpret things differently from most
bureaucrats. This is not intended as legal advice. If you need legal advice,
consult a lawyer.
Sadly not many lawyers have experience or
interest in educational laws - especially those relating to home education. Conversely
not many home educators have the legal skills to stand up to officials who overstep
the mark. Fortunately in the current environment most education officials who deal
with home educators take a professional approach, and few home educators experience
major problems with the system.
Note that advice from any of these sources
is independent of this site and we accept no responsibility for it - even if published
here. We have done our best to give an impartial overview of the situation, based
on a decade of experience - but we are not lawyers.
In New Zealand children must be enrolled in
a registered school between the ages of six and sixteen. In practice, children start
school at the age of five. To get an exemption from enrollment at a registered school,
you must satisfy the Secretary of Education that your child will be taught "as
regularly and as well as in a registered school".
The word "teach" and phrase "as regularly and as well" have not been defined (although an early home education group called themselves Prunes to reflect the first part of the phrase).
� Top
Administration
The Ministry
of Education issues exemption certificates, based on your application. Therefore
you have to provide them with enough information to allow them to satisfy themselves
that your child "will be taught as regularly and as well as in a registered
school".
Please read the "getting
started" page. With the information you have documented in these steps,
preparing your application should now be a relatively simple process.
The hardest part may be adapting your information
and approach to the MOE's forms. obviously you have to complete the application
form with names, birth dates, etc. However, often people find that the approach
of the supporting forms is too fragmented for their application.
Also parts of it are irrelevant. For example,
describing the children's work area is, in our opinion, a complete waste of time.
When children are say baking, they will work in the kitchen. When they are shopping,
they will be in the shop. They may do times tables and spelling in the car. They
may do reading on Mum or Dad's lap - or in bed. They may be part of sports or other
clubs. When writing, they may be at a computer, on the floor, at the dining table,
or a lounge table, or a desk, depending on a number of factors. Their materials
will often be spread around the house, wherever space can be found.
Another area that often causes concern is
the request for a timetable. Many people at the Ministry cannot see that children
can learn as regularly as in a school without following a school-like timetable.
This ignores the fact that home-based education is much more time-effective than
classroom-based teaching. At home we generally don't have to take rolls, control
20 - 30 children, etc. We also know our children so assessing progress is much easier.
Also of course, learning at home is not limited to the class time. We already mentioned
where children learn - many of these activities are outside school hours. Home-based
learning usually happens the whole time children are awake.
One possibility for a timetable is to say,
for example, that you will probably do social / physical activities in the mornings,
and quieter more academic type activities in the afternoons (or vice versa depending
on your children and lifestyle).
Areas of learning is another problem area
on the forms. The Ministry assumes we will teach the same stuff they teach at school.
I don't know about you, but I remember almost nothing of what I "learned"
at school. We have discussed subject areas in the
gettting
started page. legally home educators, unlike private schools, do NOT
have to follow the national curriculum.
As for the question on socialisation!!!
Do they really think that any person planning on locking their children in the basement
is going to say so? Despite the evidence that home educated children, on average,
outperform their schooled peers academically and socially, most people still worry
that our children will be social misfits.
In every area, leave yourself enough flexibility
to be able to adapt your approach as your family's needs change, and as you gain
experience.
How you balance these requirements (keeping
flexibility while satisfying the Ministry) is up to you. The Ministry should identify
any weaknesses in the content of your application and give you a chance to expand
on these, rather than simply rejecting it outright.
Currently they often ask for more rigorous
applications, including asking for detail which is not strictly relevant or necessary.
One strategy to handle a request for additional
details is to ask for the request and reasons for it in writing. That way you (and
your advisors) can analyse it to see if it is reasonable, or if it goes beyond what
is required. If the latter, you can ask the Ministry to explain further.
Of course it is important to ensure that
your application does contain sufficient information. The MOE might not always be
as supportive as we would like, but they do have a legal responsibility to make
sure that children will be taught at least as well as they are in schools. This
might not be a high standard, but it does cause problems when people equate "as
well as" with "in the same way as".
We were given a really good tip. Keep a
record on a calendar or in a diary, from about six months before the child's birthday,
of all the "educational" and / or "socialisation" activities
and field trips that children do during that time. List these in your application
as examples of what you will be doing.
See "Planning your exemption application" for additional suggestions.
� Top
Twice each year, the Ministry sends a statutory
declaration asking you to confirm that you are still home schooling all of the children
for whom you have an exemption. They will then send you (unless you choose not to
receive it) half of your annual supervising allowance for all of your exempt children.
You will then receive two equal payments per year. The amount paid per child reduces
for each child, as follows: