Government Liaison Report 
By Cynthia Hancox, Government Liaison

Home Education Statistics:

I recently received from the Ministry and ERO a range of statistics on home education. Key statistics are:

• As of 31 st December 2025, there were 11,501 exempt students, from 6,818 families.

• Auckland has the largest number of exempt students in total (2,493) with the biggest group being in Auckland North/West (1,312). Central & East Auckland has 481 exempt students, and Auckland South has 698.

• Canterbury has the second largest cohort of home educators (1,581 students from 901 families), and Waikato the third largest (1,274 students from 759 families).

• Four other regions each have between 1,010 and 1,069 students each – these are: Northland, Bay of Plenty/Rotorua/Taupo, Taranaki/Whanganui/Manawatu and Nelson/Marlborough/West Coast.

• Remaining regions are: Wellington (782), Otago/Southland (771) an Hawkes Bay/Gisborne (471).

• In 2025, the Ministry received 2,372 exemption applications. Of those, 1,977 were approved (83.3%), 105 were declined (4.4%), and the remainder were still pending at the end of the year.

• In 2025, 1,205 students ceased home education.

• Between 2015 and 2023, ERO reviewed an average of 7 students per year. In 2024 and 2025, they reviewed 106 and 111 students respectively.

I have requested further data, particularly around ERO review outcomes and subsequent actions.

Review of Home Education Policy, Regulations and Monitoring:

The Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, has indicated that home education “regulations” are being reviewed, with an intention to “strengthen monitoring.”

We have been attempting to arrange a meeting with the Minister, but without success so far. I have had an email from the Senior Policy Manager at the Ministry’s National Office, to whom the Minister’s office passed my request from November last year, stating that “This work is still in development, and we are not in a position to discuss this with you at this time. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you later in the year to hear your perspectives and feedback once our work is further developed.”

I am continuing to seek further information and meetings, as I believe it is backwards (though not uncommon) for the Ministry to decide among themselves matters about an issue (in this case, home education) of which the majority staff involved know very little, if anything, at all. While they may not be able to answer our questions at this time, I believe they would benefit from information we may be able to offer so that their considerations are made from a better-informed position.

Regardless of what unfolds, its seems very likely that home educators will in the future be subject to greater scrutiny than we have for the past 17 years, and it would be wise for all families to be giving consideration to how they are recording their children’s learning and progress, and what evidence they could show ERO or the Ministry if asked, as well as regularly reflecting upon their learning programme and their children’s changing needs, and what, if any, improvements they could make.

We should be doing these things anyway – but it is very natural for people who have never been called upon to show proof to just let them slide, as there are always other more urgent matters to attend to.

Please understand that a review is a serious matter. On the basis of a finding by ERO that your child is not being taught either as regularly and/or as well as, the law allows the Ministry of Education to revoke the exemption certificate and require the child to be enrolled in school within 14 days, with no right of appeal.

Obviously, that position is extremely inequitable – no school would be subject to immediate closure on the basis of one “failed” review – a fact that we continue to put across whenever we can.

In the past, ERO reviews of home educators have generally been conducted in a way that is reasonably fair. However, I currently have no confidence that we can trust this to be the case. ERO recently completed over 100 reviews of home educators that were conducted in a manner that was anything but reasonable or fair, representing a significant breach of trust. Work around that is on- going but I have concerns about how it may translate to future reviews of the wider home education community.

NCHENZ’s Government Liaison team will continue to advocate for the community. Whatever unfolds, it is not going to happen overnight. No one should panic at this stage, however, while there is nothing to panic about is the best time to start to “up our game” while there is space and time to do so.

I’ve been in the home education space for 30 years, and have seen government and Ministry policies come and go. One thing I can say for sure – it is home educators of the past who by and large positioned themselves well to show evidence of their children’s learning programme and give thoughtful responses to questions by ERO that led to the relaxing of previous expectations of routine review of home educators, because over 95% of then-home educators had positive review outcomes. Let’s make sure we are again well positioned to demonstrate that our children are also being taught at least as regularly and well as…should we be called upon to do so.

NCHENZ has information about ERO reviews and preparing for them on the website here: https://www.nchenz.org.nz/being-reviewed

School Trials - Term 1 Ministry Mistakes

Since 2015, there has been a policy in place whereby home educated students can enrol in a school for up to 10 school weeks, and within that time return to home education without needing a new exemption application. Until recently, the Ministry did not proactively inform families of the trial period when they enrolled a student in school. This term, however, the Ministry decided that they would do so, a positive thing. However, because this was done by the Resourcing team, who are less familiar with general home education policy, there have been some mistakes made in communications, with families told, in some cases, the wrong start dates for the trial period, or given wrong information about how long the trial lasts and how their allowance is affected.

Here are the correct facts:

• If a student was enrolled in a school from the first gazetted day of the school year (Jan 26 th this year) then their enrolment date is backdated to 1 st January, and therefore their exemption ceased from December 31 st.

• If they enrolled at any later date, then backdating does NOT apply.

• School holidays do not count as part of the school trial period. You have up to 10 school weeks for a trial.

• Upon return to home education, if you notify the Ministry within the 10 week period, exemptions can be reinstated without the need for a new application, in most cases.

• The exemption and therefore the supervision allowance eligibility, is ceased from the first day of enrolment. If the student is enrolled in school for less than 28 days before returning to home education, then you are entitled to the allowance for the entire period for them. If enrolled for more than 28 days, then returned to home education, the entitlement is on a pro-rata basis for the period in which the exemption is in force.

If you were given the wrong information by the Ministry, and have had any issues around returning to homeschooling, please get in touch for support. You can email govt.liaison@nchenz.org.nz.

Attendance Services issues

Most of you reading this newsletter will already have your exemptions and have no expectation of interactions with attendance services. However, some of you may be in the process of transitioning a child to home education, or talk with new families who are.

In January 2026, new attendance services contracts came into effect. This means in many, if not most, parts of the country entirely new companies and new staff are contracted to deliver attendance services. Training for those services has been limited, and as a result, staff in some regions are applying what they think is expected of them in ways that are problematic for home educators. I have written to the Ministry manager responsible for overseeing attendance services and expect to meet with them soon to discuss the issues that have arisen.

Meanwhile, if you have an exemption application being processed by the Ministry and are contacted by Attendance Services, let them know that is the case. They can follow up with the Ministry on the progress of your application.

If you have not yet submitted your application, and are contacted by Attendance Services, let them know when you expect to submit it by, and do get it completed as soon as you can. They should be willing to give you reasonable space to do this.

What attendance services should not do: ask you to explain your reasons for homeschooling, tell you that “most applications are unsuccessful so you need a Plan B” (the stats above disprove that!), tell you that you should give them the exemption application to review or submit, or that they will “help” you with the application (they don’t have the knowledge), or say that they have to continue to follow up with you after the exemption has been approved.

If you have any difficulties or questions, email me at govt.liaison@nchenz.org.nz.

2026 Elections and Party Policies on Home Education

I will be contacting each of the political parties running in this year’s elections and asking them about their policies or intentions in respect of home education, and their responses will be published in our next quarterly newsletter. Be sure to look out for that in our October newsletter!