At the time of the earthquake in Christchurch truancy was frozen.

https://hef.org.nz/post-earthquake-schooling-options/

This week the MoE sent letters out to Schools telling them to begin following up all those who had not returned to school yet. It would seem that this is the beginning of bringing Truany back for earthquake affected families.

Until now we have been advising those who now want to home school their children to just enjoy beginning to home school without applying for an exemption.

The law says that a child must be attending school during the exemption application process.

The MoE is looking at enabling earthquake affected families to get their exemptions while their children are only on a school role and not actually attending school – this will be for a short time only.

We expect to know more about this soon. So if you are earthquake affected and wanting to get an exemption for your children to home school then get your exemption filled out but don’t post it yet because we trust the time will be soon when you can send it in to any MoE office in New Zealand without having to have your children in School.

Update:

Truancy is now back. So you will need to either have your children in school, on correspondence school or get and exemption to home educate your children. Unfortunately we were not able to organise it so that you could apply for an exemption while you keep your children at home. The law says that your children must be in school between the ages of 6 and 16 while you apply for your exemption. There are some exceptions so please ring us to see if you qualify for these. Phone 06 357-4399 or 0800 100 692

For exemption and home schooling advise:

Contact

Canterbury Home Educators

CHEInc@free.net.nz

(03) 322 4824

http://www.che.org.nz

Home Education Foundation

craig@hef.org.nz

(06) 357-4399

https://hef.org.nz

For a booklet on the Exemption process

https://hef.org.nz/2011/applying-for-an-exemption-to-educate-at-home/