Deciding to homeschool is the hard part. Actually starting is mostly paperwork and a plan — and neither is as daunting as the forums make it sound. This is a plain-English, step-by-step guide to how to start homeschooling in Australia: what the law requires in each state, what you actually have to teach, and how to build a first week that works without buying a boxed curriculum.
Step 1 - Register with your state or territory
Homeschooling is legal in every Australian state and territory, but it is regulated state-by-state, and you must register before you begin (or within the window your state allows). Each state has its own body and process:
- NSW — NESA (the NSW Education Standards Authority). Application plus a home visit; registration is per-child.
- Victoria — the VRQA. You apply before starting, and your learning plan must address the eight key learning areas. Our Victorian homeschool guide covers this in detail.
- Queensland — the Home Education Unit. Written application with a summary of your educational program.
- WA, SA, Tasmania, ACT and NT — each has its own registration body and review cycle; search your state name plus “home education registration” to find the official page.
The common thread: every state wants to see that you have a plan covering the required learning areas, and most check in periodically. None of them require you to be a qualified teacher. We break down what each state asks for, and what you do not need, in homeschooling requirements in Australia.
Step 2 - Use the Australian Curriculum as your map
You do not have to invent a curriculum. The Australian Curriculum (Foundation to Year 10) is free, public, and lays out exactly what schools teach at each year level in each subject. Most state registration bodies either require you to address it or accept it as the default framework, which makes it the easiest possible answer to “what do I teach?”
Practically: look up your child’s year level, read the content descriptions for English and Maths first (they are the backbone), and treat the rest as a checklist to spread across the year. You choose the pace, the order and the method — the curriculum only names the destinations.
Registration asks whether you have a plan, not whether you own a certain textbook. A simple plan you actually follow beats an elaborate one that lives in a drawer.
Step 3 - Build a small resource stack, not a big one
New homeschoolers tend to over-buy in the first month. The families who have been doing this for years — including the communities we surveyed in our guide to what Reddit’s homeschool communities recommend — keep coming back to a small stack: the free Australian Curriculum site for the map, ABC Education and your local library for content, your state body for the rules, and one or two interactive tools for daily practice. Add more only when you hit a genuine gap.
Step 4 - Plan a simple week around your child
A sustainable first timetable is shorter than school: most families find two to three focused hours a day covers more ground than six hours of classroom time, because none of it is queueing, transitions or waiting for the class. Anchor the week with daily English and Maths, rotate science, HASS and the arts across the remaining days, and leave real space for the interests that made you consider homeschooling in the first place. Built well, those interests are not a distraction from the curriculum — they are the doorway into it.
Step 5 - Keep evidence as you go
Every state reviews registration eventually, and the request is always the same: show us what the child has been learning. Do not reconstruct this at review time. Keep a simple folder — work samples, photos of projects, a one-line diary of what you covered — and the review becomes an afternoon, not a panic. Tools that track completed lessons quietly do part of this for you.
Where Sprout fits
The recurring problem in a homeschool week is not the plan — it is producing the daily lessons themselves, five days a week, across subjects. Sprout generates interactive, Australian-Curriculum-aligned lessons on demand: you name the topic and your child’s year level and interests, and it returns a lesson they work through on their own, with worked examples and self-checking practice, in Australian spelling. The dinosaur-obsessed Year 3 kid gets fractions through fossil digs; the netball fan gets data through match statistics. New accounts start with free credits, so you can generate your first lessons free while you are still filling in the registration forms.
FAQ
Is homeschooling legal in Australia?
Yes. Homeschooling is legal in every Australian state and territory, but it is regulated state by state and you must register - with NESA in NSW, the VRQA in Victoria, the Home Education Unit in Queensland, and the equivalent body in each other state or territory. Every state wants to see a plan covering the required learning areas; none require you to be a qualified teacher.
Do homeschoolers have to follow the Australian Curriculum?
Most state registration bodies either require your plan to address the curriculum’s learning areas or accept the Australian Curriculum (Foundation to Year 10) as the default framework. It is free and public, and using it as your map is the simplest way to answer “what do I teach?” - you keep full control of pace, order and method.
How many hours a day does homeschooling take?
Most families find two to three focused hours a day covers more ground than a six-hour school day, because none of the time is lost to transitions, queueing or waiting for a class. A sustainable week anchors daily English and maths and rotates the other learning areas across the remaining days.
What records do I need to keep when homeschooling?
Every state reviews registration periodically and asks the same question: show us what the child has been learning. Keep a simple ongoing folder - work samples, photos of projects, a one-line diary of topics covered - rather than reconstructing everything at review time. Tools that log completed lessons do part of this automatically.