Home Educating other people’s children and the exemption

I wrote to the National office to get the offical word on who needs to put in the exemption – the parent or the one home educating the child. I got back the answer that I was expecting.

My email to Lucy at the National MoE Office:

Dear Lucy

I have just received this email.

“I have a question about schooling a friend’s child and who applies for the exemption. My friend, wants to take his child out of school and has asked me if I could school this child along with my 2 children the same age. My question is, who applies for the exemption? Do I write it as I am the one planning and teaching or does he do it even though he will not be involved very much in the day to day schooling?”

We have had this in the past – infact we home educated someone else’s child for year as well. But I would like to get the official word from you on this (I guess from your legal department). I would think that the parent should put in the exemption application with a statement from the person doing the home educating as well.

Looking forward to hearing from you so that we know how to advise others in the future.

Lucy’s reply to me:

Just as I thought.

Hi Barbara,You are correct – The law requires the application to come from the parent regardless of whether or not they will be doing the educating, but the application will need to satisfy the Ministry as to the “at least as regularly and as well” requirement so will also require some input from the person actually doing the home educating. It is the parents responsibility to ensure the children are getting an education at least as regularly and as well as a registered school as that is what they declare to us in the statutory declaration.

Kind Regards,

Lucy Ambrose | Senior Advisor | Student Engagement

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From the Smiths: https://hef.org.nz/2011/craig-smith-26-january-1951-to-30-september-2011/

Updated 1 October 2014: Three years on (Craig Smith’s Health) page 7 click here

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Needing help for your home schooling journey:

https://hef.org.nz/2011/needing-help-for-your-home-schooling-journey-2/

And

Here are a couple of links to get you started home schooling:

Information on getting started: https://hef.org.nz/getting-started-2/

and

Information on getting an exemption: https://hef.org.nz/exemptions/

This link is motivational: http://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-what-is-it-all-about/