Exemption Form

“Remember, you will need to have a record of progress and achievement over time i.e weekly, termly, annually. This may also be needed when your child goes on to further education or training.”

This is enough to put anyone off home educating their children – well most people. Some people love to write up these sorts of reports on blogs and in diaries – most people don’t. So this needs to be clearer. It is enough to write up these reports for the ERO or for further education or training when required.  I mean that, it is OK to forget about the “ERO, further education or training” and get on with “teaching our children as regular and well as a registered school” until we need the “record of progress and achievement”. At that point we can sit down and collect all the information that we need which will be different for each “ERO, further education or training”.

At a recent meeting with Jim Greening (Group Manager, Schools and Student Support), Sonya Logan  (Manager, Student Engagement) and Lucy Ambrose (Senior Advisor, Learner Engagement) we talked about this. I asked them if the advice I give out to people is correct. This is what I like to tell people.

Forget about the ERO. Just get on with “teaching your child/ren as regular and well as a registered school”.

UNTIL you get the letter from the ERO informing you of a review. There are only 35 reviews budgetted for each year and the ERO has been doing far less than this over the last few years (14 last year).

Then DON’T start suddenly doing a whole lot of bookwork with your child/ren, carry on as you have been doing. This is the time for you, as the parent, to get prepared for the review. You will have roughly two weeks to prepare. Here is something I wrote up about this a few years ago which might be helpful:  https://hef.org.nz/2006/preparing-for-an-ero-review-2/. During this two week period there is plenty of time to write notes, collect photos, videos, samples of work etc, representing a “record of progress and achievement over time”.

They all nodded and said that this was a good and acceptable way to “keep a record of progress and achievement over time“.

Other helpful info on ERO reviews: 

NO MORE Home Schooling ERO REVIEWS!!!

What should we be doing now that there are no longer ERO reviews

Youtube short clip: Book: Preparing for an ERO Review

Here are a couple of booklets written by NZ authors to help you through your ERO Review

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