Welcome to Future Learners. Join us, as we embark on a journey to empower students, parents, and educators, as we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of education, schooling and what it takes to grow and succeed in today’s world. This podcast is brought to you by Euka future learning. Australia’s largest online, full-time education provider for K-12 students seeking a flexible, relevant & meaningful education. Visit euka.edu.au for more.
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Raising mentally healthy kids: What a psychologist wants you to know | 054
Thursday, September 24, 2026 • Duration 27:35
A child can be doing well at school and still be struggling.
Ellen Brown talks with psychologist Lisa Boland about how to recognise that child and what to do first. Lisa believes that a child’s mental health should come before their schoolwork and their attendance record.
Ellen and Lisa also discuss what bullying does to a child’s nervous system, what helps children with ADHD and autism learn, and what healthy socialisation actually involves. Much of the conversation applies to any parent, whether their child is at school or learning at home.
Meet Lisa Boland
Lisa runs her own psychology practice in a rural area, which means she sees close to everything a psychologist can see. Her clients range from young children to adults, and many are children struggling to get to school.
She is also a mum to two neurodivergent boys, and she homeschools them.
In the episode, she gets specific: the sign that arrives hours after the school bell, why a child can stay anxious at a new school where everything is going well, and the one thing she would tell every parent about mental health.
Key discussion points
“School refusal” is increasingly called “school can’t.” The wording names what is happening: a child who is unable to get there.
Pushing through carries a cost. Lisa’s view is that it often worsens existing mental health concerns, and that apparent improvement can mean a child has learned to mask.
The clearest signal often arrives after school. Post-restraint collapse describes the child who holds it together all day and falls apart at home.
Stress from bullying accumulates in the nervous system. The brain remembers the triggers, so a new school can still set it off.
A child who does not feel safe cannot learn. A child in a stress response is on the lookout for danger.
Some neurodivergent children love school and thrive there. Others burn out, and Lisa has seen severe cases.
Social skills cover much more than making friends.
Mental health comes before academic achievement and attendance.
How to tell school refusal from an ordinary bad morning
The advice used to be to push through. Get to the school gate today, get through it tomorrow, and count the attendance as a win.
Lisa’s view is that we know more now. Pushing through often makes existing mental health concerns worse, and the improvement that appears afterwards can be misleading, because children are good at pushing things down to fit in or to spare their parents.
Sometimes a child who could not attend, and now can, has recovered. Sometimes they have learned to mask. Lisa sees that second version often in neurodivergent children, and it tends to surface later.
The signs of school refusal a psychologist looks for
Every child is different, but these are the patterns Lisa watches for:
An inability to get there. The child is frozen and anxious.
Changes in mood or behaviour around the school day.
Losing interest in things they used to enjoy.
Food restrictions, or a jump in worries and questions.
Post-restraint collapse.
That last one describes a child who holds everything together all day and falls apart the moment they get home. Lisa describes parents and teachers comparing notes and realising they are getting two very different versions of the child.
Why an anxious child struggles to learn, even after the bullying stops
While bullying is happening, Lisa explains, a child spends much of the day in a fight, flight or freeze response. That kind of stress is cumulative, building in the nervous system day after day.
The brain also remembers the triggers. Removing the bully can leave that response in place.
A child might get on well with everyone at a new school and still struggle there, because the setting keeps reminding their nervous system of something else. Lisa gives the example of driving past the old school, or going back for some reason, and watching it resurface. Ellen notes that people generally assume it is over once the bully is gone.
“A child cannot learn if they don’t feel safe.” — Lisa Boland
Her reasoning is that a child in a stress response is on the lookout for danger, and that is where their attention goes. Decoding a word or working through subtraction asks for attention they are already spending elsewhere.
Lisa says that plenty of neurodivergent kids thrive at school and love it.
Among her clients and in the homeschooling community, she also sees autistic and ADHD burnout, sometimes severe, in children who presented well right up until they could not hold it together anymore.
These are often the children described as a pleasure to have in class. The effort of masking stays invisible until it runs out. Lisa describes children who reach a point where they cannot leave their bedroom, or cannot bring themselves to switch from one screen activity to another.
She makes an academic point alongside the clinical one. A child learning in a way that suits their brain is a child who can reach their potential.
Key things that help many children with ADHD
Lisa named a few things that help many children with ADHD, with the caveat she repeats throughout: every child is different.
Movement and the freedom to get outside.
Engagement. She describes the part of the brain needed for schoolwork switching off when a task is boring or asks for long stretches of sitting still.
Relationship with whoever is teaching, including some banter back and forth.
Snacks on the go while they work.
Some classrooms can accommodate this. Ellen, a former teacher, says it gets hard with thirty children, and Lisa agrees. The dyslexic child needs one thing, the autistic child another, the ADHD child another again, and the rest of the class something else.
Episode 23 covers homeschooling with dyslexia, ASD and ADHD.
Does homeschooling affect a child’s social skills?
Ellen says this is one of the questions they hear most, and Lisa’s answer widens what this includes.
Making and keeping friendships counts. Other considerations:
Can your child go into the shop, spend their own pocket money and handle the interaction at the counter? If they cannot find what they need, can they ask someone?
Can they sit down to lunch with children and adults of all different ages?
If something seems off at the park, do they know what to do, and do they know your phone number by heart?
Lisa’s point is that social skills are much broader than making and maintaining friendships. Those wider skills get practised everywhere a child goes.
Ellen adds that adults choose the people they spend time with based on shared interests. She also notes that for many children who are miserable at school, the social environment is the reason.
Lisa’s own children could be out with friends every day of the week if they wanted, so the opportunity is plentiful and they aren’t missing out on anything.
Is taking your child out of school the right decision?
Ellen describes a guilt she hears from parents new to homeschooling, a sense that a better parent would have pushed harder or stayed longer.
Lisa says choosing to homeschool your child is going above and beyond, and that a child who found the school environment distressing was unlikely to reach their potential there.
She also talks about the practical side. Getting the right support in place can be close to a full-time job: appointments with psychologists and paediatricians, monitoring whether medication is working, and observing your child throughout the day.
For the parent watching their child crying every morning before school, her advice is direct.
“For me, that child’s mental health is always going to take priority over their academic achievement, or worse, their attendance record. That’s something that, as a psychologist, I couldn’t care less about. You know your child. If you can see that your child is suffering, and that environment is going to exacerbate that suffering, prioritise their mental health.” — Lisa Boland
She adds that the decision is smaller than it feels. Nothing is permanent; you can change your mind in six months, and children are good at catching up. Many families use time at home as a reset while support is put in place, then return to school later.
Both Ellen and Lisa loved school themselves, and both look back and notice a cost they missed at the time.
Asked what she would tell every homeschooling parent in Australia if she had five minutes, Lisa said this.
“I would tell them you’re already doing a brilliant job. If you take care of your mental health, your kids will follow. If you’re good, they’ll be good.” — Lisa Boland
Why this episode matters
This episode is about recognising when a child is struggling and knowing what to do first.
Lisa puts safety ahead of schoolwork, mental health ahead of attendance, and treats the decision to homeschool as one you can revisit. For a parent weighing up homeschooling, that reframes the question from whether this is the right call forever to what their child needs right now.
Start the free homeschooling course
If you are working out what this could look like for your family, our Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling covers registering legally in your state, choosing and structuring a program, building a daily rhythm, supporting a child who learns differently, and knowing your child is progressing.
Questions answered in this episode
What is the difference between school refusal and school can’t?
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They describe the same situation. “School can’t” is the term increasingly used because it names what is happening: the child is unable to get there.
How do I know if my child is genuinely struggling at school?
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Lisa looks for an inability to get there, where the child is frozen and anxious, along with changes in mood or behaviour, losing interest in things they used to enjoy, new food restrictions, or a jump in worries and questions.
What is post-restraint collapse?
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It is the meltdown that arrives after school. A child holds everything together through the day, then falls apart once they are home. Lisa describes parents and teachers who compare notes and realise they are describing two different children.
Does pushing my child to attend school help?
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Lisa’s view is that it commonly makes things worse, and that improvement afterwards can be misleading. Some children genuinely recover. Others learn to mask their difficulties, which she says tends to show up later as poorer mental health.
My child was bullied, and we changed schools, so why are they still struggling?
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Stress from bullying is cumulative in the nervous system, and the brain remembers the triggers that set it off. A new school can be fine socially and still carry enough reminders of the old one to keep the stress response running.
Can an anxious child learn at school?
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Lisa’s answer is that a child who does not feel safe is in a stress response and on the lookout for danger, which leaves very little attention available for schoolwork.
What helps children with ADHD learn?
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Lisa named movement and time outside, work that is genuinely engaging, a good relationship with whoever is teaching them, and snacks available while they work. She describes these as general things that help many children with ADHD, alongside her caveat that every child is different. She also notes that some schools accommodate this well, and that it gets difficult across a class of thirty.
Will homeschooling affect my child’s social skills?
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Lisa’s answer is no. She also describes social skills as much broader than making and maintaining friendships: handling an interaction at a shop counter, asking for help, mixing with people of different ages, and knowing what to do and who to call if something goes wrong.
Am I giving up on my child by taking them out of school?
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Lisa believes that choosing to educate your child yourself is going above and beyond, and that a child who found the school environment distressing was unlikely to reach their potential there.
What if I take my child out of school and then change my mind?
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Lisa describes this as a normal outcome. Nothing is permanent; the decision can be revisited in six months, and in her experience, children are good at catching up.
About the host and guest
Ellen Brown is Euka’s co-founder and Head of Education. She is a qualified teacher, a mother of five, and has homeschooled for 12 years.
Lisa Boland is a psychologist who runs Lisa Boland Psychology, a rural practice offering face-to-face and telehealth appointments for all ages. The practice works across anxiety, depression, trauma and more, and also provides autism, ADHD and cognitive assessments. She is a mother of two neurodivergent boys and homeschools them.
This article is general information, not clinical advice. If you are worried about your child’s mental health, please speak to your GP or a registered psychologist. You can also reach Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 or Lifeline on 13 11 14, free, 24 hours a day.
NSW 2026 draft homeschooling policy: What does it mean for families? | 053
Wednesday, September 16, 2026 • Duration 48:06
An important note for NSW families: nothing is in effect yet, and the current guidelines still apply until the policy is finalised. The draft keeps the three things registration has always asked of you: an education plan based on the NSW curriculum, records showing that plan is being delivered, and an assessment by an Authorised Person. It still doesn’t say exactly what’s required or how much evidence is enough. A key concern is that no urgent pathway has been added for families who can’t wait for the 12-week registration processing times.
Brett Campbell and Ellen Brown work through what the draft means in practice. What counts as evidence, where Authorised Persons come from and whether they must visit your house, how likely approval really is, and what you can do if you need to remove your child from school while awaiting registration.
Key points from this episode
Nothing has changed yet. The Department has published drafts. The existing Guidelines remain in effect until a final policy lands.
Parental choice survives into the new framework. The draft Policy states plainly that education is primarily the responsibility of the child’s parents.
The draft does not say how much evidence is enough. It lists ways you can show learning, such as journals, checklists, excursions and digital portfolios, but sets no quantity for any of them.
That leaves the judgement to your Authorised Person, and their approach can vary significantly.
Refusal is rare. Families may get stressed thinking their application is unlikely to get approved, but if you have a plan, it is very likely your application will be approved.
An audit recommended NSW speed up registration a year before the draft was written. The draft sets an indicative timeframe of up to 12 weeks, which is too long for some families.
You can still act if your child cannot wait. An exemption from attendance comes from your school principal, not the Department, and taking your education plan to that meeting makes it much easier for a principal to say yes.
Nothing has changed yet for NSW homeschooling families
Homeschooling registration in NSW moved from NESA to the NSW Department of Education, and the drafts released on 27 July 2026 are the Department’s first framework. Consultation ran as a short survey and closed on 10 August 2026. The Department has confirmed that the current Guidelines remain in effect until the new policy is finalised.
What the NSW draft policy gets right about parental choice
What evidence of learning means under the NSW draft
Why no set amount of evidence can be unsettling
What an Authorised Person is checking for
Who your Authorised Person is and what the home visit involves
Will my homeschooling registration be approved in NSW?
The audit recommendation the NSW draft did not act on
How to take your child out of school while you wait for registration
Why this episode matters
Start the free homeschooling course
Questions answered in this episode
Have the NSW homeschooling rules changed?
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What counts as evidence of learning for homeschooling in NSW?
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How much work do I need to show my Authorised Person?
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Who is the Authorised Person and do they have to come to my house?
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Does the Authorised Person have to see my child?
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Will my homeschooling registration be approved?
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Why would I be given a shorter registration period?
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Can I appeal a homeschooling decision in NSW?
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Can I take my child out of school before my registration is approved?
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Do I need to register if we are only taking a term off school?
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About the hosts
Ellen:
We always want to keep at the centre of homeschooling, that parents have the choice to homeschool, and that it should be the same choice as if you were in public school, or you’re deciding to go to private school. Deciding to homeschool is a legal choice in our country. And so they got that right. And that’s important in the definitions. Sometimes we find that APs are coming with a lot of experience. And they’ve been and they’re really you know, I love to think of them, like I said before, as a bit of a coach, and they’re walking alongside you with enthusiasm saying, okay, how can I support you? And that has been my experience. But I have heard from other parents that they have had an experience that is a bit more challenging.
Brett:
The decision itself to homeschool for the majority is a major decision, and it and it puts this pressure on and people are like, am I going to get accepted? Am I not? You know, it’s not your final exam where, you know, yeah, the likelihood of you getting accepted is low. It’s actually the opposite. The likelihood of you getting accepted is very, very high.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Future Learners podcast, the home for parents and students thriving with homeschooling in Australia. Your hosts, Brett Campbell and Ellen Brown, are the co-founders of Euka Future Learning, Australia’s largest online K-12 homeschooling provider. Join them as they guide you from uncertainty to complete confidence. Let’s get into it.
Brett:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Future Learners. I am your host, Brett Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Euka Future Learning. I’m joined by my amazing co-founder and co-host and our Head of Education, Ellen Brown. How are you today, Ellen?
Ellen:
Very well, thank you.
Brett:
You have us set up for this topic. So this is this is a juicy topic. So I’m going to hand it straight to you. Set us up. What are we in store for today?
Ellen:
Today we’re going to be talking about the draft policy documents that the New South Wales Department of Education have produced. So we know that there’s been a change. Home schooling has moved from NESA to the Department of Education. They’ve provided a draft about how they might change some policies, and we’re going to talk about that today.
Brett:
Excellent policies, policies. Although sometimes the policy conversations may not be the most exciting or exhilarating for, um, whether it’s people speaking about it and or the participants listening. And I just want to double tap on the importance of this. Um, and whilst this might not be the most exciting topic of conversation for you to indulge in today, definitely stick with us. We’re going to we’re going to unpack it to the best of our ability. And as Ellen said, is this is a draft policy. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what that means, because we’re getting a lot of families reaching out to us with questions, queries, concerns, etc. And we’re going to try and do our absolute best to, um, talk to those points today. So over to you, Ellen.
Ellen:
One of the reasons that we want to talk about this is really to provide support to families as there especially families that are already in homeschooling and they’re thinking, okay, what’s going to change? How will this affect me? And it’s quite natural for people to begin talking. And then the it starts to snowball. And so it’s really just to provide support and let you know that we are watching and we’re trying to work through how to best support you as we make these changes.
Brett:
I think it would be a good idea if you actually set up and share that, you know, obviously, Euka one of our, uh, roles as we see it in the industry is, you know, we want to be a voice, uh, and also a seat at the table for, you know, the tens of thousands of families homeschooling. And if can you maybe share a little bit just to start on how this even originated, like how we even got to where we are now with these policies, draft policies?
Ellen:
Yes. Well, look, NESA was, um, having homeschooling under their umbrella for the last 15 years. And so earlier in the year that the movement of homeschooling under the New South Wales Department of Education happened. And then it was quiet and everybody wondered, well, maybe no changes will happen. And that sort of everybody continued along on their merry way until all of a sudden and of course, in the background, the Department of Education was saying, okay, how are we going to manage this? You know, when NESA had homeschooling, it grew and grew and grew. The numbers grew. So this was an opportunity for the Department of Education to say, okay, fresh air, a fresh voice, I suppose. Also good to keep in mind that nearly actually just over a year ago or nearly a year ago, in September last year, there was a review into homeschooling in New South Wales and audit. And some of those recommendations would have been also being looked at when they came to drafting these policies. And we’ll be able to talk about that, because one of the glaringly obvious ones that didn’t change is part of our discussion this morning as well. I’m going to run through a few different things that we can see haven’t changed first, or where New South Wales, the policy, the draft policy of has got it right. And then we’ll get into some of the topics that are causing a bit of concern from homeschooling families and from Euka as well. So let’s start by looking at where the draft policy got it right. And one of the things that we could say they definitely got it right is where they talk about parental choice and responsibility. We always want to keep at the centre of homeschooling that parents have the choice to homeschool, and that it should be the same choice as if you were in public school or you’re deciding to go to private school. Deciding to homeschool is a legal choice in our country. And so they got that right. And that’s important in the definition. So they say parents have the primary responsibility for education of their children. So we’re happy about that. It’s a big deal. It’s one of those things that can be argued about in policy where they start changing the language. But we’re really happy with that language.
Brett:
Yeah. And just to that, there’s in the actual the draft of the policies, you know, to give a little bit more clarity. And I think where their angle of it was and how they’re making that decision has actually helped the wider, broader audience of homeschooling. And I’ll get to that and says the education plan must be based on New South Wales curriculum, which is obvious for New South Wales, and be suitable to the child’s learning needs as identified by the applicant, which is the parent. Parents may amend the plan during a period of registration to ensure it remains fit for purpose, including to meet the needs of children with disability or additional needs and that needs to be carved out in there because not all children are created equal, but what it also does by having this, this caveat in, in that point is that you don’t necessarily even need to have special needs in your family or your household. What it does is it gives you the ability to be able to, um, yeah, fit for purpose. Right. And, and a lot of these drafts and a lot of, um, regulations that get laid down, um, whether it be in homeschooling or just in general, everyday life is there’s always nuance to the meaning and the definition of it. Unfortunately, I’ve read too many agreements and I’ve looked at all these things. And what you quite quickly find is that someone’s interpretation of that could be very different than another ten people who read it, and they all interpret it differently. So this is still very much open for interpretation, because the real question then, if you dig on that a little bit deeper and it’s like, well, what does fit for purpose even mean, right? Like there’s there’s barriers and laneways into all of that. But at a very high level, what it does for us is and again, Euka is built on this concept of flexibility, obviously, whilst we provide the entire curriculum and so forth, you know, we absolutely have that built into our product and program, where you can ideate and stretch and even remould, or even recreate a lesson if you desire, which is which is fantastic for the family. So.
Ellen:
Yeah, absolutely. So, so the two things that we’re really happy to see in there, that parents have the responsibility for making a choice around their program, their education program. And as you are mentioning, the flexibility for parents to be able to choose how that’s delivered to their child. And we want to see that kind of flexibility. Like you were saying, Brett, it’s really important to not see structure as an opposite to flexibility in actual fact. And we’ve talked about this before in a podcast. Having some structure allows you then to be flexible and springboard off over here and off over there, but you’re still ticking those boxes at the lowest level.
Brett:
So and just and just for those families who are reading that point and going, oh no, I don’t want to have the flexibility. I just want to be like, I just want a program that I can follow. I totally hear you and understand that. And again, that’s that is the beauty of a program like Euka is that there is that structure there if you need it to keep you in the, in the guardrails. But, um, the beauty about that point, though, is if you do desire to have flexibility, that is your prerogative.
Ellen:
Mhm. Absolutely. So this is an area now evidence of learning. That is one of the things that makes parents most nervous because especially in New South Wales you know Euka have students all around the country. So we work very closely and look very closely at what the Department of Education is doing in every state. And New South Wales is a state where there’s a lot of personal opinion. When you’ve got an authorised person who’s kind of like we used to call them, your learning coach, rather than the education police, who is someone who is actually your direct support person when you’re homeschooling. And so evidence of learning is a big one for parents. What do we actually have to provide to the department? And in some states they’re very prescriptive, like in Queensland, when they say exactly how many pieces of work and what you need to provide. New South Wales isn’t like that. And so there’s no so the actual from the draft that we can see in the frequently asked questions, which is where actually a lot of the noise has come from parents. It actually says that the department states there’s no mandatory quantity or format of evidence. It gives examples of learning, learning, journals, checklists, excursions, digital portfolios. But and broadness is wonderful. But it can also be unsettling because it then comes down to your authorised person to say, well, actually, this is too much, this isn’t enough. And so that’s where parents can start to feel a little bit like it’s shifting sand.
Brett:
Yeah. And the draft that states parents must keep records demonstrating how the child’s education plan is being implemented and how the requirements and any conditions of registration are being met. That’s a that’s a big sentence on the surface. It’s like, oh, it makes sense. Like you should be keeping some records and demonstration of how your child’s education is being rolled out. Um, but then there’s the how is that meeting the requirements of the registration, which when you register, you have to obviously follow a syllabus as well, which is one of the detailed points here is, you know, you must, um, follow the New South Wales syllabus, which is very important. And out of all the states, New South Wales is the only one that has its general like these guidelines around you must follow the New South Wales versus, you know, the rest of the states are happy to follow the Australian curriculum as well. So there’s a few nuances in there. But the to your point on this broadness can lead to ambiguity, which can lead to frustration, anxiety and a whole heap of different things because in certain times of need. Sometimes you just need to be. Or you want to be told exactly what to do. Like you point there around Queensland, House says, you know you need to provide this many. This many of this, this many of that. Like then you know where you are. You’re either hitting the mark or you’re not hitting the mark because where it falls back to an individual person and, you know, touchwood, everyone in the department who is, who has these AP roles, they’re doing the best that they can with what they know to be true, right? However, not everyone governs the exact same stipulations, like if they had in their rule book. That are your guidelines are there must be a submission of 23 pieces of work. Like if they’ve got that because they must have a gauge to work from if they have that, then you know I would. My personal opinion is like, how about we just share with the families going, this is a minimum requirement. Like I think having minimum baselines is a very important place to start from, because if you don’t, you have no expectation because and I say this, you know, constantly in Euka when we’re speaking to the team, it’s like if someone goes, it’s going great. I’ll be like, what does great mean? Like exactly how great, how many this, how many that, what’s this mean? Etc. So very, very important to not be lackadaisical. When is such an important outcome for a family who’s whether you’ve been in homeschooling for some time, you’ve been doing it a specific way. It might really shake up the way you’ve been doing things, because what you think might hit the mark. Now, the new regulations, under their own personal definition, whether it’s currently being hidden right or it hasn’t been shared, um, then it can lead to lead to, you know, a lot of ambiguity and possible frustration because, yeah, it’s a it’s an ungoverned thing right now.
Ellen:
It is. It’s actually quite stressful. I love that the homeschool community get together very quickly. They know their AP from their area. They talk on their homeschooling forums about, oh, did you know, did you have so-and-so as your AP? What did they expect? And but it’s kind of a shame that it has to be like that, that it can’t be a bit clearer. I’m certainly not one for let’s have three of those and four of those, because the flexibility is really fantastic when you’re homeschooling that you can work with your child to demonstrate them their learning in a way that fits them. And, you know, as an organisation and our role to support you as parents, that’s something we’ve really struggled with. How can we support you so that then you’ve got lots of options to show your learning. So, you know, it might be a good opportunity just to mention these new assignments that we’ve added to the program now, so that if you want to keep those as work samples, you know where the curriculum is being covered. You know, everything that you know that that you’re going to be asked and at least you’ve got that freedom to say, well, look here, I can see there’s an assignment on such and such. Actually, my child likes to do something different, but I’m going to adapt that. So, you know, like I said before, structure and flexibility can go really well together. If you’ve if you’ve got a base to move from. So it is a tricky one. And we certainly do hear some big differences between what different authorised people actually ask for.
Brett:
Yeah. And for those who are homeschooling and not using a platform like Euka, you know, keeping records and demonstrating how your child’s, you know, actual education plan is being implemented and met like it’s not an easy thing to try and solve for if you don’t have structure. Right from Euka’s perspective is we have the ability you can do the structured assignment air quotes that we have. Right. It’s it’s a very detail like it’s a detailed plan for that lesson that we know will absolutely be applicable and get the automatic tick of approval from any AP. Because of the way that we’ve built it and structured and so forth. You can do that. You can take photos, you can upload, you can hold it in our platform and in our portal, um, for safekeeping, because I don’t know about you, but, you know, you get paper and you’re writing on it. You’re gonna have filing cabinets and look for some people, they’re very, very diligent like that. So, um, that’s a skill I wish I had a little bit more of, but, you know, having the ease of a digital platform, you do the lesson, you click through, you’ve got the report, you can add context because that’s another thing as well. Um, you know, with our, with our reporting that we provide, um, that that comes with Euka, you can put uh, specific. So you finish the lesson is specific questions about how did you go, what did you find work this that, that. And you can add context to it because that’s what the APs are effectively looking at. Right. They’re coming to your, your home. Um, and we’ll talk about this in a minute as well because I think that’s, that’s a, um, something that needs to be discussed is they’re coming to you and saying, look, Demonstrate what you’ve done and how have you done it, and how does that then meet the curriculum? That’s where it gets. It’s not a someone’s not turning up and just showing, asking to show some work. And what have you done and drawn and pictures and this and that is it. Like but have you actually ticked the boxes that are aligned to the curriculum? Hence, you know, every lesson with, with our platform is directly connected to a specific curriculum code. And you can see that in the lesson itself. But the beauty of, again, and I don’t want us to sort of sound like a bit of a pitch fest for Euka, but it certainly is, because everything we’ve built is for these reasons, because we know all of these things that we’re going to discuss and go through. The tension that families have can be obliterated and not even there if we just sort of follow the process, you know, to be able to do each lesson, upload it at the end of the year. Yeah, well, when required, press a button. It compiles an entire report that you just hand to them and go, here you go. And they’re like, oh wow, how’d you do that? And you know, it’s it’s magic.
Ellen:
Absolutely. I think knowing that that comes from experience. I’ve been homeschooling in New South Wales for 12 years, and I’ve had a lot of different APs that I’ve had to work with, and so having that experience, knowing what it feels like to think, okay, someone’s coming and they’re going to have a look and they’re judging me. Um, it really is reflected in how we prepare what we do at Euka to make sure that families can feel confident in that, having been there ourselves.
Brett:
We’ve mentioned the word AP a handful of times, and I think now would be a good time. Can you fill in the gaps of for those who are like, I’m not sure what an AP is, I’m looking to get started or I’ve just started and I’m not sure what’s going on. Like, talk about the role of the AP as it relates to New South Wales, and then maybe provide context of that’s not the case for the rest of the country.
Ellen:
In New South Wales, we have an authorised person that’s in charge of your area of homeschooling and that authorised person, AP, will come and visit you. There are some APs that are very happy to meet with you at the local library or at the community centre instead of your actual house? But that’s something that you’ll be able to negotiate directly with the AP. So once you enrol in or you applied for your application to become a homeschooler, you’ll receive information back in an email back organising for that first meet up with an AP to come and see you and discuss what your plan is for homeschooling.
Brett:
So let me ask this, Ellen, for the for the people who are curious like do, why do they have to come to your house? Why can’t they do a zoom meeting? Do they do zoom meeting? Do they meet online? Do they do phone calls? Or does everyone have to have someone literally turn up to their place of living?
Ellen:
Well, that’s going to be remains to be seen with this new umbrella of the Department of Education. In the past, I’ve had them. I’ve had certain APs that need to come to my house, and other times I’ve had some that are very happy to do a zoom meeting. So it really is dependent on the person. Most of the time the APs are coming out of the mainstream school system. Sometimes they’re principals who’ve retired or teachers that have been teaching. So they’re coming with that kind of background and most in, I have never actually found an AP that’s actually come from the homeschooling background yet. That would be nice when that finally happens. But at this stage, sometimes we find that APs are coming with a lot of experience, and they’ve been and they’re really, you know, I love to think of them, like I said before, as a bit of a coach, and they’re walking alongside you with enthusiasm saying, okay, how can I support you? And that has been my experience. But I have heard from other parents that they have had an experience that is a bit more challenging, where they haven’t felt quite so supported and they’ve felt nervous. So it’s hard to know whether that’s come from the actual AP or whether it’s, you know, an internal one ourselves. But it’s always uncomfortable when something’s coming to judge what you’re doing. No one feels comfortable in that situation.
Brett:
That’s right. Yeah. And because of the decision itself to homeschool for the majority. Is a major decision. And it and it puts this pressure on. And people are like, am I going to get accepted. Am I not? Can you talk to that as well that we might be able to add a little bit of, um, flavour to on the. You know, it’s it’s not your final exam where, you know, you know, the likelihood of you getting, um, accepted as low. It’s actually the opposite. The likelihood of you getting accepted is, is very, very high. Obviously you have to meet many different, you know, box ticks, etc. But can you speak to that to try and like lower the temperature of some families, like really stressing out prior to the specific meeting?
Ellen:
If you’re stressing out about your approval, chances are you’ll be approved because you’ve already thought through. Oh, I hope my plan is good enough. So you’ve got a plan and you’ve thought through and you’ve, you know, made some decisions. You’ve got some information. You’ll be okay as long as you’ve got a plan that’s covering the New South Wales curriculum, you’ll be okay. One of the things that has been an area of concern within this draft policy, again, is, um, where they say in the policy that says a short period of registration may be recommended. Now, this isn’t new, where instead of being given your 12 months or your 24 months, sometimes in your homeschooling approval, you’re given a shorter term. And that’s concerning because of the language around that, that there’s areas of improvement that have been identified that need to be reassessed or current concerns about the child safety. So that’s some sort of very vague language that’s causing concern for parents. Like what you were just saying, Brett. It’s a very small percentage of people that are ever told, actually, you can’t homeschool like it’s, you know, less than 2% because people have got a plan. They don’t just say, I’m going to homeschool and then put click on, you know apply and off we go. They’ve done some thinking. They’ve got a plan. Uh, but sometimes we do find that people will not be given the full 12 months. And that’s where parents want to see some a bit clearer language on what those, those what areas of improvement might be meaning.
Brett:
Correct. And that’s that ambiguity where it’s it’s in any, any contract. There’s always the let’s keep this vague so that we could claw back something if we need to. And here’s something as well that I think is important to touch on because it’s also important not like to consider that the department is that when they’re creating policies like this, they need to try and do a catch all net. Right. And there are cases where, you know, and this is the minority of course by a lot. But there are cases where children are in households where we would probably deem probably not a great idea to be in, or hope like, you know, is not the best environment for them. Right. And this is where it can get difficult at times because these type of policies, they have to have the vagueness in there for protections. And again, I’m not speaking for the department here myself. I’m just reading through between the lines. Right. Um, but I personally if I’d sort of steelman the opposite side, if I go well, I’d want that in there simply because there needs to be these allowances. And it’s hard because a lot of people go, well, I’m not impacted. So I don’t even want to be in that classification either. I don’t want that rule applied to me. But it’s like when you’re trying to apply a rule to an entire sort of industry standard. There’s always the nuances that need to be considered. And a lot of times, unless there’s a specific stipulation directly attributed to families with specific violence or reasons as to being whether it’s not a safe environment for children. It has to be, uh, it has to be umbrella underneath a much broader, broader piece. But it still doesn’t negate that there should, I believe, be a little bit more specifics around that. Because if you give a family look, we’re going to give you three months or six months. It’s like, what exactly is the reasons for that? And what exactly must change in order to get 12 months? Right. And why wouldn’t you give me 12 months? Yeah. Um, so those there’s, there’s lots of considerations to that.
Ellen:
Yeah, absolutely. I think when it comes to the child safety part, we already know the authorised person coming in to check on your family is, um, a person that’s a mandatory reporter. So to have it written there like that, I don’t know. I, I know there was a case in Queensland, and the fact that I even know that there was a case in Queensland where a child was unsafe and that caused the reviewing Queensland means that it’s it’s a to to make the decision to homeschool is a big decision for a family. And you put the spotlight on yourself. And most educators who are even in mainstream school would agree that children who are in an unsafe learning environment, the parent wouldn’t do that. It’s like they’re generally there a child that’s registered in school and just don’t go, um, that those children would be far more unsafe situation than someone who’s made that decision to homeschool. Um, so that’s probably where the fear is coming from. Why is it in there? And then you’ve got an authorised person, just the one person coming and making decisions. So that brings us to the next part, which is about the review process. So if a family is given a shorter period of time, there’s no discussion in the policy about how we can get a review from an independent AP on that. That is just a line in the sand by the one AP if by a small, you know, situation that you. Have your homeschooling approval knocked back then the policy says that then another AP can then make a review. Thankfully it doesn’t end there because a peer review doesn’t make much sense. As far as, um, real clarity around a decision that’s being made. There is actually a review process after that. So, um, you know, it’s like you said, it’s it’s an unusual thing to be knocked back for your approval. You’ve really got to have no plan and no idea. And, um, you know, it’s it’s definitely what Euka is created for, to make sure that families are well supported and very confident going into their meetings with their AP. And as far as, uh, approval is concerned, we’ve never, ever had anybody who hasn’t had their approval given the stamp of approval.
Brett:
Mm. Absolutely. Um, so the other one is one where we were talking before about the review last year in September, the audit.
Ellen:
The Auditor-General’s report. Yeah. So I wanted to talk about that. So back in September of 2025 there’s a recommendation recommendation 2b. And it says that the Audit Office recommends that reform of homeschooling regulation consider expedited registration processing times to shorten transition periods. So that’s one of the recommendations that’s come through. And what we’ve seen in this new draft is that there is no special, um, expedited process for children that are really in need of, um, instant removal from school.
Brett:
And that’s something that. This is this is what the, the, um, draft procedure actually stipulates. Says and this is step 5.1 for those reading at home, aims to finalise the application within the indicative processing time frame of up to 12 weeks. And then it says in the draft FAQs, until your registration is approved, your child must remain enrolled at school. And this is something that, um, yeah, we have some very strong opinions around Ellen.
Ellen:
Yes, absolutely. Because we see that people who are true, uh, and I was going to say choosing to homeschool. Yes, sure, they’re choosing to homeschool, but many times they’re moving into homeschool because that is the safest thing for their child. You know, we know about the bullying rates and the anxiety and mental health issues and reasons why removal from school is an urgent thing, and that actually is quite common. So it’s kind of an oxymoron. So we’re choosing to homeschool when often it is really the only option at that point.
Brett:
Well Ellen, I’ve been doing some digging around that because, as you know, I love I love data and I like to speak to the truth as in the closest approximation, I can get to the truth governed by data and actual real life happening. So and this is something that that has really highlighted for me, where I feel that there’s, there’s something not right. Okay. And what I mean is you mentioned that, um, yeah, about bullying and so forth. So we ask every family who comes to Euka, what’s your primary reason for homeschooling? And then we have we have multiple options that people can choose. Right. Um, and again I’ll preface this by saying data is as only as good as the way in which it is collected. Okay. You can very easily create a data set that is very ambiguous and probably not accurate. By leading a specific question to get someone to choose a specific answer and I’ll I’ll say that first. But we asked directly primary reasons and then we got secondary reasons, etc. As we’ve been reporting back since 2021, you know, circa 25% of families, their primary reason is bullying. And then we add in other social element reasons. We go we go all the way up to 30 percent just for bullying and social, um, reasons and so forth. Anxiety. And so that’s our data that we’ve collected amongst a whole heap of other data points and different reasons and so forth that we’ve got as to why families homeschool and choose homeschooling. I looking at the 2025 data report from the New South Wales Government in 1st of January, 2022 to the 31st of December, are we doing calendar year here? They are reporting. Wait for this. Don’t fall off your chair. But just for those playing along at home. At this period, we reported 25%. It was about 24.7 to be exact, right. But circa 1 in 4 children. Their primary reason was bullying. The New South Wales government data says he gave reason for homeschooling. They have philosophical, religious, special learning needs, bullying, other and nil response. Those are the options you have, right? Bullying comes in at 0.68% right now. You’ve got the New South Wales government and this is probably my voice is starting to raise here because I’m getting passionate about this. But I’ll tone down. My voice is probably busting out on the podcast, but we’ve got 0.68% now. Keep in mind other comes in at 31.69% and nil response comes in at 22.91%. This is why I said the way in which you ask and collect your data is very, very important because I would have to. If I’m making an assumption on being a data analyst here, I would have to say there would be a lot of people in the other and the no response it would have to fall under bullying. Right now that’s an assumption because I don’t have the facts there. However, what the problem I have with this is that the department or the government itself is showing. So if you’re the New South Wales premier and you’re on TV and you go, oh, look, bullying rates is 0.68%, there’s no bullying. What do you mean, bullying? It’s not even a thing. Right. So and check this out. If we fast forward to January 2024 to December 24th, low and behold, the bullying rate has decreased to 0.45%. We’ve noticed an increase, which is interesting. And this is where the nail in the coffin for me and I just can’t understand this. And I need to. We need to do something about. This is from January 1st, 2025 to December 2025. The bullying rate has reduced to a staggering 0.1. You might as well say, ah, there’s no such thing as bullying, right? And if this is how they’re collecting their data one the collection method is abhorrent and it needs to be fixed because I get the concept of having other and nil. And look, there’s families who might not want to report that. And I totally get that as well. Right. But here’s where the problem is. They’re going to be looking at these reasons, right? If I’m in the department I’m like, okay guys, I’m here to reform the homeschooling unit and how homeschooling works across the country. I’m not going to go, oh, here’s an opinion. I’m going to go show me the data. Okay. Bullying 0.1. That’s great. Amazing. Okay. We probably don’t need to do too much about bullying. Right. And it sets up a series of decisions that are. Based off a very shaky, to say the least. Foundation of data collection. Right. So with their stating, in the last four years, there’s been a decline from 0.7% to 0.1. That’s a huge decrease. But that’s not what we’re seeing in our data. And again, I’m not I just want to stipulate that I’m reporting the data in which I have been able to see and view and the way in which we collect those pieces of data as well. Now, the reason why I dig in on this topic so much is the issue we have with this, and this came out of the Auditor-General’s report that families just can’t wait 12 weeks, especially if you’re one of the children who had finally, because I’ll tell you this, I would hands down, almost guaranteed the majority of families who put their child into homeschooling their child has been bullied, not yesterday, but they’ve been bullied for a very long period of time. That has now gone to a point that you can no longer continue this on. It’s gotten to a point where the mental health has declined so badly that you’re like, I’m, I’m at my last option, right? They’ve had enough and they need to make change. And we’ve got data saying this. We’ve got 12 weeks and this is in the draft policy off the back of the Auditor-General’s report. It’s almost like it fell on slightly deaf ears. Almost. It’s like to even say that we aim to finalise the application, like it says, aims to. And I get why. Because there’s not a lot of APs and there’s tens of thousands of students homeschooling. Like it’s just the math isn’t math thing when you’re trying to really put this together because it says aims to finalise the application, meaning we may or may not. You may be up to 16 weeks, you might be 20 weeks, you might be two weeks. We don’t know. But we’re going to aim to have it done. And again, this is not a I’m not trying to push at the APs themselves either, or trying to do the best they can. And I could only imagine, you know, these visits for, for a lot of absolutely exhilarating and they love it. But it’s slow to go from house to house to house. You know, you go from probably three visits locally when you could do probably 20 on a zoom, 30, 50 a day on a zoom meeting. Right. Um, which could expedite it. I spoke about this with the Auditor-General’s report. It’s like a solution is quite easy, is let’s just say you give them a temporary a temporary registration pass. And when your AP can actually catch up to go and visit them, they might have already been homeschooling for 12 weeks, and they’ve already done a complete term versus sitting in limbo. Because I’ll tell you what, as a parent, the last thing I would ever do is want to put my child back into an environment that I need them to be removed from. And then it says here, and this is the I’ll, I’ll wrap up on this point, Ellen, until your registration is approved, your child must remain enrolled at school. Now, let me ask you this, Ellen, because I’m not one for breaking rules. I’m not one. I’m always I’m always looking at the nuance of how something says. Does that specifically mean like they can remain at school but can under these rules or under this draft because you can still be enrolled at school, but you’re just not turning up the school and you can start your homeschooling, talk to talk to that nuance.
Ellen:
Yeah. So this is another area where they’re frequently asked questions of the draft policy come into effect. So can my child exit school? Um, and the response is no, you need to stay in school unless given permission by the principal. Now, this is where the problem is. A principal is not in a position most of the time to be able to say, oh, you’ve been bullied, okay. Because it’s their job to ensure there’s no bullying. So the only option they’ve got to legally do what the department has said here is to go to the principal and say, we’d like to remove the student because they’ve been bullied and they’re having a mental health crisis or whatever’s going on, we need to remove them immediately. And the principal has to say, not a problem at all. Here’s an exemption, which means, yes, you’re not in. You’re still enrolled in the school, but you don’t have to go. That’s a really. Some principals are wonderful and they’ll say yes, you know, if that’s what your child needs, that’s what we’ll do and will support you in that. And we do hear that because more and more principals are educated now about what homeschooling can look like. But sometimes you hit a principal that doesn’t have any idea what homeschooling can look like. And they think that it means no schooling, you know, and so they are very opposed to homeschooling. So it just depends, you know, who you get. Um, the most important thing to know here is, um, a doctor certificate or a psychologist or a counsellor can support you in getting that exemption and taking your child out. It’s very important to know that your that you don’t have to be a passive passenger. And if your child is at risk, you need to act.
Brett:
Yeah. Great. And I stay steadfast on that. Your child is the most important thing. Not what the school says or doesn’t say either. But to your point, Ellen, you know, um, I always give benefit of the doubt. And of course, there’s lots of schools out there and principals that totally understand we’re in a world now where you as a parent, you need to look after the most important thing and that’s your children. And, uh, if you are in a position where you’re extreme, you because we get feedback and this is coming from lots of pieces of feedback that we get and lots of, um, you know, from families who are asking questions, you know, saying, look, I want to start now, but I’m not registered, can I what should I do? And the advice there is go and speak directly to your principal. Let them know that look, I fear for whatever reasons, x, y, z, um, and based on these decisions and the mental health of my child, we are removing them from the school currently. And we request from you written permission that we, uh, we get an exemption right now whilst we undertake because whilst removing my child from the scenario, it’s not like you’re going to put them on a six week holiday per se. It’s like you want to continue their learning on and then you can you can go and have that. So when the time comes and you do have a visit, you’ll be able to show that here’s the exemption, etc..
Ellen:
And you know one thing that would be helpful, actually two things that popped into my mind there is sometimes when you go to a principal with an exemption, what the feedback we’ve had is if you can go with an education plan. So a lot of the families that join Euka are without yet having been approved, which is a lot of families will join Euka prior because they need that plan anyway. When they’re registering, they’ll take that with them. The scope and sequence or educational learning. Plan with them to the principal and say, we need an exemption. Here’s what we’re going to do. And going with something like that just means that the principal can feel comfortable because, you know, he has a legal responsibility when you’re on his books as one of his students or her students. So you want to be able to help them make the decision for that exemption. So taking a plan is very helpful. The other thing is, you know, yes, you want your child to be able to, you know, move out of the school system and have a plan in place. It doesn’t mean from the first week that we would even dream of expecting that your child jumps straight in and starts doing their homeschooling plans straight away. There is a time that is needed for a child to be able to just decompress after going through that kind of stressful environment, but what we have found is that if there is some an education that’s there for them to be able to go on with at lessons and additional stress that can happen when they are removed from school. All of a sudden they see their peers moving forward. And that can actually heighten the fear and the anxiety that the child is having. So knowing that, yes, you know, here’s your lessons. These are the same topics that are being done in school that can just give them a, ah, while they’re taking that time to get the support that they need and the mental health support they’ve got, that educational foundation that gives them security.
Brett:
And a nuance to that as well. Ellen. And for those families who are like, well, my child isn’t being bullied and there are no sort of social reasons as to why we just want to change in our life. And we’d like to make that change now. It’s been the school holidays. We’ve thought about it, we’ve sat down, we’ve been considering it for some time. We’ve but we’ve we’ve stayed at school. And now’s the time to make the decision. The last thing you want to do as a family as well go. You know what? I’m going to put our entire life on hold for 12 weeks until we get a registration.
Ellen:
But if your child hasn’t had any issues, going to the principal and saying, look, this is what we would like to do, they’re usually okay with that too. So don’t think that there has to be a problem. There’s more and more people saying, you know what, we just would like to take a little bit more of an active role in our child’s education. It’s not unusual now. So that’s something you can.
Brett:
Yeah. And something we find as well is and having that conversation with the principal is you may go, you know what we just want to do for this term. And we see this a lot. We have a lot of families who come and their intent is, look, we just want to give it a go for a term. And for many families, they go back to school as well because it’s like, look, it worked great for that period of time whilst we’re doing X or while we’re travelling or while, yeah, this was going on or you know, you yeah, there’s, there’s so many nuances like you could be having, you know, issues in the, in the family, you know, there could be different reasons. And you know, it’s, it’s, it becomes really hard to do drop offs and pick ups and all these things, you know, because there’s lots of things that go on is you might just need that period of time. It might be just one term. It might be two terms. Um, but even if you have that communication with the principal, then look. No, there. There may be a plan on. And let me ask you this, Ellen does if someone’s in that sort of category where, yeah, they’re considering taking a term out. Can you still remain in school enrolled and then also still registered. Speak to that part.
Ellen:
Yes. So you don’t need to register in that case. And we certainly are getting a lot of that. Um, children that are coping with the school refusal situation, um, or there’s some truancy or all kinds of reasons like that. Schools are very happy to support that exemption, which means you’re still enrolled in school if they can see you’ve got a great educational plan. And so we’re getting more students that say with school refusal, where the school is trying to work with the family. And they may be saying, well, how about if your child comes for half a day? Or how about if your child comes one day a week, and that’s quite common these days for schools to be sort of putting a bit of a plan in place when parents or schools then decide that we really are going to do that, kind of like a movement back into school plan. It can take six months, but knowing they’ve got a full education plan outside of the classroom supports the school and the student for that re-engagement again.
Brett:
Excellent. All right. Well, and we’ve tackled a fair bit there. Was there anything else left on your list that needed to be needed to be discussed?
Ellen:
Look, I think that I mean, I am an eternal optimist. And I always know that when things change, there’s a big kind of a. Oh, no, but just know we’re working hard behind the scenes as well and looking at what policy changes might happen and what you’ll need. And that, you know, we see our role as being able to support you no matter where policies are, no matter what state you’re in. So we’ve got you covered.
Brett:
Absolutely. And if you are a Euka family, just know that everything about the product, the program, the service etc. Is purely designed to eliminate all of these stressful, possible stressful situations. If you ever have any questions, make sure you jump into our support team. We’re here to chat. Um, and if you’re not currently a Euka family, um, just make sure that, uh, you understand and read the guidelines and the policies and be prepared. Um, the best that you possibly can be. Uh, and like always, remember that everyone’s trying their best with what they have. Um, and, uh, that’ll lead us to a very good place. So. That being said, Ellen, thank you very much for today. Uh, and to all our amazing listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, please let us know. We’d love a five star review. Head over to iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, wherever this show is being displayed. Um, and give us your feedback. Thank you very much and have an amazing rest of your morning, evening or night. Bye.
Episode credits
The Social and Academic Advantages of Homeschooling | 052
Tuesday, September 1, 2026 • Duration 35:21
This episode delivers good news for parents, whether you’re already homeschooling or still considering it: the research is on your side. Homeschooled kids tend to do as well as or better than their peers, both socially and academically.
Dr Rebecca English is one of Australia’s most respected researchers in home education. She has spent 15 years studying homeschooling families.
In this episode, Dr Rebecca and Ellen dive into key factors that help homeschooled children succeed. This includes giving children a say in how they learn, the freedom to stay with a topic until it clicks, and the choice to lean into what genuinely interests them.
Meet Dr Rebecca English, home education researcher
Rebecca did not set out to research home education. Her first degree was in business, majoring in advertising, and she moved into teaching after deciding advertising was not for her. She taught in schools serving low socioeconomic communities, then completed a PhD on international students in Australian secondary schools.
She came across home education several years ago and proposed it as a research topic. She began interviewing families in 2011 and has been studying the field ever since.
Her perspective matters to a parent weighing this up because it is based on evidence rather than opinion. She has spent 15 years interviewing families and reading the studies on what actually happens to home-educated children.
In the full episode, she gets specific about the parts families worry about most. What the research actually shows about social and academic outcomes and the importance of agency for successful learning.
Key points from this episode
Why homeschooled students do as well as or better than their mainstream-schooled peers.
Homeschooled students actually can go to university.
Agency is a child’s ability to control their own learning experience.
Why agency is important for intrinsic motivation.
Running the day based on tasks not time.
Parent engagement is one of the strongest predictors of educational success.
Homeschooling allows a child to work towards mastery.
What the research says about homeschooled children’s academic outcomes
Homeschooled students can still go to university
Why homeschooled students tend to do better
Does homeschooling affect social skills? What the research says
What learning agency means, and why it drives motivation
Tasks, not time: how to give a homeschooled child some say over their day
Why working to tasks prepares children for real workplaces
How to give choice to a child coming out of school
When an anxious child needs to settle before starting schoolwork
Why teachers are leaving the profession, and how it connects to school refusal
What a good education means, according to a home education researcher
Questions answered in this episode
Is homeschooling better than school?
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Do homeschooled students perform better?
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Does homeschooling affect social skills?
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Can homeschoolers go to university in Australia?
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Why do homeschooled children tend to do better?
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What does “agency” mean in education?
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How much choice should I give my child?
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My child has never had a say in how they learn. Where do I start?
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What if my child finishes their work in two hours?
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Does this work for an anxious or neurodivergent child?
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Why this episode matters
Start the free homeschooling course
You’re Not Alone: Finding Support on Your Homeschooling Journey | 051
Friday, August 21, 2026 • Duration 35:13
If you are considering homeschooling, have just started and are feeling overwhelmed, or have been at it a while and hit something unexpected, this episode is about finding support and navigating the questions and challenges that may arise.
Most families come to Euka for the thing that sits at the centre of homeschooling: the curriculum. As Australia’s largest online K-12 homeschooling provider, we cover the full range of grades, and our team is where families bring their questions about lessons, progression, reporting and getting registered.
Alongside that sits a different kind of help. The Home Education Association is an independent, volunteer-run member body offering advocacy with state authorities, local community connections, member resources and work experience insurance. Many Euka families are also HEA members.
This episode covers both. How to choose between a structured program and building your own, and what to do if your school resists letting your child go. It also covers how children rebuild their confidence socially, which is often what brings experienced families looking for answers.
Ellen Brown talks it through with Tina Smith, who homeschooled six of her own children and now helps other families through the same problems as Treasurer of the Home Education Association. Her sixth child is now at university.
Meet Tina Smith
Tina is Treasurer of the Home Education Association, a volunteer-run member organisation that supports homeschooling families across Australia.
She is answering from both sides. She has been the parent working it out across six children, and through HEA she has helped other families through the same problems: getting a family registered, working through the options with a parent who had been told homeschooling was her only remaining choice, and helping a family rebuild their child’s social confidence after they left school.
In the full episode, she gets specific about the practical parts. Which office to contact when a school will not release your child, what a structured program is genuinely good for, and the work experience insurance most families do not know is available.
Key Points
Key discussion points:
Where families can find homeschooling support
Finding a homeschooling community
What if the school pushes back when you withdraw your child?
Who to contact when the school says no
Structured program, or build your own?
Cover the base, then add your own
Why more families are homeschooling for bullying and neurodivergence
How homeschooled children build social confidence
Other support available to homeschooling families
Questions answered in this episode
How do I start homeschooling in Australia?
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Where can I get homeschooling help and advice in Australia?
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How do I find a homeschool community or support group near me?
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Can a school refuse to let me withdraw my child for homeschooling?
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Should I use a structured program or build my own?
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Will my child miss out socially if we leave school?
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Does homeschooling work for a child with ADHD or autism?
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My child is being bullied. Is homeschooling the answer?
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Can homeschooled students do work experience?
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Why this episode matters
More support for getting started
Do I need to be a teacher to homeschool? | 050
Thursday, August 13, 2026 • Duration 25:45
Do you need to be a qualified teacher to homeschool your child? No, and the clearest explanation of why comes from someone who trains new teachers.
It is one of the questions we are frequently asked, and for a lot of families it is the one that stops them before they start. Ellen Brown puts it to Danielle McGregor, who covers what makes a good teacher, why parents consistently underrate what they already bring, and what to do on the days you have no idea what you are doing.
Meet Danielle McGregor
Danielle is Head of Educator Development. Her job is training teachers and giving them the skills and confidence to succeed.
Her current work is with volunteer teachers who teach English to adult migrants and refugees. Consider what that asks of someone: teach a language to adults you have just met, who may share almost no words with you, with no relationship to draw on.
If untrained volunteers can manage that, a parent teaching their own child is starting several steps ahead. You already have the relationship, the history, and years rather than a single term.
She is not a schoolteacher and not a homeschooling parent, which is what makes her worth listening to here. She has no classroom to defend and nothing to sell you about home education, only years of watching untrained adults turn into good teachers.
In the full episode she gets specific about what decides whether learning sticks: why watching an expert teaches your child almost nothing, the point most families stop at when they should keep going, and how far you are allowed to change the material in front of you.
Key Discussion Points
Formal training isn’t what makes a great teacher. Danielle has watched many great teachers arrive without it.
You already bring more than you think. Your own experience of learning, your knowledge of your child, and the relationship you already have all come with you.
Nobody knows your child the way you do. A specialist arriving from outside has to guess, and usually reaches for something generic.
A child who feels safe learns more. Lower stress and freedom to make mistakes are what let a child stay in the hard part of learning.
Why a Teaching Qualification Isn’t What Makes a Good Teacher
What Do Parents Have That a Qualified Teacher Doesn’t?
You Know Your Child Better Than Any Specialist
You Have Time, and Permission to Get It Wrong
Why a Child Who Feels Safe Learns More
Why Teaching a Skill Matters More Than Covering Content
The Trumpet Lesson: Why Watching Isn’t Learning
The Cake Test: Four Depths of Learning
How This Maps to Learn, Practice and Apply
Can You Change the Euka Program to Suit Your Child?
Why This Episode Matters
More Support for Getting Started
Answered Questions
Do I need to be a qualified teacher to homeschool my child?
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Am I smart enough to homeschool my child?
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What if I didn’t finish school myself?
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What if I don’t know the answer to something?
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How do I know if my child is actually learning, or just getting through the work?
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Do I have to follow the program exactly as written?
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What if I get it wrong?
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The Real Benefits of Homeschooling: A Euka Graduate’s Honest Answer | 049
Monday, August 3, 2026 • Duration 26:22
What are the real benefits of homeschooling, from someone who actually lived it? Not the marketing version. The honest one, from a graduate looking back.
In this episode of Future Learners, Ellen Brown sits down with Jessica Garner, who was homeschooled with Euka from Grade 7 through to Grade 12, then went straight from graduating into a career at Euka, helping other families work through the exact decision her own parents once made. Jessica is one of the rare guests on this show who can answer the questions parents quietly worry about, because she has been the child on the other side of them. She is warm and clear about what made her homeschooling years so good, candid about the one thing she found hard, and revealing about why almost every family she has spoken with arrives with one reason and stays for a completely different one. If you are weighing up home education and you want a real answer from someone who has genuinely been through it, this is the conversation to listen to.
Want to have a positive impact on thousands of families like you?
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Key Discussion Points
The Benefit She Rates Above Everything Else
Socialisation: Busier and More Social Than School Kids
Working From Fourteen, and Why Homeschoolers Get Hired
Life After Homeschooling
From Homeschooled Student to Helping Thousands of Families
Why This Episode Matters
Answered Questions
Is homeschooling isolating? What does a homeschooled child’s social life actually look like?
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Is homeschooling active learning, or just working through a book?
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— Jessica Garner
What is the honest downside of homeschooling?
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Can homeschooled students still get into university?
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What do families really worry about before choosing to homeschool?
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— Jessica Garner
I’m a parent feeling anxious about homeschooling. Where do I start?
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Your Family, Your Journey
Is Homeschooling Worth It? David’s Story of Homeschooling 3 Kids Over 8 Years | 048
Wednesday, July 22, 2026 • Duration 38:06
Is homeschooling worth it? It’s the question almost every parent on the fence keeps asking, and in this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Ellen Brown puts it to someone with eight years of answers. David Smith, a long-time Euka parent, talks through what it was really like to homeschool three children.
David’s family didn’t come to homeschooling looking for something better on paper. They came looking for a way out of a school where his eldest son, who is on the autism spectrum and has ADHD, was being bullied and wasn’t thriving.
David covers the whole journey: deciding to leave, telling the school, the first six to twelve months, keeping learning fluid rather than recreating school at home, discovering hidden strengths in subjects like maths, using AI as a patient tutor, and watching an eldest son who once “wasn’t working at all” move confidently into the workforce.
He also shares the small, practical things that worked for his family. A whiteboard maths race with his middle son. Letting the kids build their own timetable. Staying involved even after a long day at work.
Want to have a positive impact on thousands of families like you?
Leave us an audio question or share your homeschooling journey — anonymously if you like. Real questions from real families help us bring more value to every episode.
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Key Points
David’s homeschooling journey, in brief:
Practical ideas from David’s family:
Where the homeschooling journey started
Telling the school
Making homeschooling fluid, not another school
When maths stops being scary
Fostering a love of learning
From homeschool to the workforce
Advice for parents on the fence
Answered Questions
Can you homeschool a child with autism and ADHD?
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What do you do if your child is being bullied at school?
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How do you stop homeschooling from feeling like school at home?
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How can AI help with homeschooling maths?
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Is homeschooling worth it, from a real parent’s experience?
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Does homeschooling prepare children for the workforce?
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Why This Episode Matters
Your Family, Your Journey
Preparing Your Children for the Real World: 6 Life Skills Homeschooling Can Teach | 047
Tuesday, July 7, 2026 • Duration 52:19
In this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Brett Campbell and Ellen Brown tackle the question underneath almost every parent’s worry right now: how do I prepare my child for a world that is changing faster than the one I grew up in? The short answer is that preparing children for the real world is less about facts and figures and more about the skills a curriculum alone rarely teaches, and homeschooling gives families the time and space to build them.
Brett and Ellen walk through six real-world skills the Euka program is built to develop: financial literacy and entrepreneurship, independent thinking, self-awareness and reflection, hands-on real-world experiences, connecting learning to the world around them, and responsibility and self-management.
Along the way they share practical, do-it-today ideas any parent can use, from letting a five-year-old scan the groceries to understand money, to a nightly gratitude check-in, to the simple “this or that” trick that helps a child feel ownership over their own choices.
Want to have a positive impact on thousands of families like you?
Leave us an audio question or share your homeschooling journey — anonymously if you like. Real questions from real families help us bring more value to every episode.
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Key Points
The six real-world skills covered
Practical ideas any parent can use today
Why preparing children for the real world starts outside the curriculum
Financial literacy and entrepreneurship
Developing independent thinkers
Building self-awareness and reflection
Creating space for real-world experiences
Connecting learning to the real world
Developing responsibility and self-management
Answered Questions
What life skills does homeschooling teach that a standard curriculum might miss?
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How does Euka teach financial literacy and entrepreneurship?
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How can I teach my young child about money at home?
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How does Euka help children become independent thinkers?
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What is a simple way to build self-awareness in my child?
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How does homeschooling create space for real-world experiences?
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Why This Episode Matters
Your Family, Your Journey
Starting Homeschooling Mid-Year in Grade 11 or 12: Senior Pathways Available at Euka | 046
Wednesday, July 1, 2026 • Duration 37:45
In this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Brett Campbell and Ellen Brown put the lens on the senior years. As families near Term 3, the pressure of Grade 11 and 12 climbs, and so does the anxiety. The short answer they keep coming back to: yes, you can switch to homeschooling as a senior student, even mid-year, and you can do it without losing a year of progress.
Brett and Ellen walk through how Euka’s Grade 11 and 12 program works, the assessed and non-assessed streams, the university pathway recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries, and the flexible fourth term that gives senior students room to breathe, work, and explore what comes next.
They also answer the fear underneath almost every senior enquiry: without an ATAR or HSC, is the door to university closed? Ellen’s answer is that it is the opposite, and this episode explains why.
Want to have a positive impact on thousands of families like you?
Leave us an audio question or share your homeschooling journey — anonymously if you like. Real questions from real families help us bring more value to every episode.
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Key Points
How the senior program is built
Switching mid-year
The pathway beyond Grade 12
The single most asked question: can a senior student switch mid-year?
How Grade 11 and 12 work at Euka
The university pathway: over 100 universities, no ATAR needed
The flexible fourth term: room to breathe, work and explore
Answered Questions
Can I start homeschooling in Grade 11 or 12 mid-year?
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Can my child get into university after completing Grade 12 with Euka?
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“We guarantee that students who are keen to get into uni are able to do that anywhere in the country, or even if they want to go study in the US, they can do that too.”— Ellen Brown
Does Euka provide a report card or academic transcript for Grade 11 to 12 students?
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Do Grade 11 and 12 students have to sit exams?
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Can my child change subjects between Grade 11 and 12?
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Why This Episode Matters
Your Family, Your Journey
School Refusal in 2026: What It Really Is, and How to Help Your Child | 045
Thursday, June 18, 2026 • Duration 36:22
In this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Brett Campbell (CEO and co-founder of Euka) and Ellen Brown (co-founder and Head of Education) unpack one of the most misunderstood challenges parents face: school refusal. What it actually is, why it peaks in the middle of the year, and what a parent can do about it.
If your child has started dreading school, or mornings have become a battle, this conversation is a calm, practical place to begin.
This article is general information, not clinical advice. If you are worried about your child’s mental health, please speak to your GP or a registered psychologist.
School refusal is not a child being difficult, and it is not a single bad morning. It is an ongoing emotional response that makes getting to school genuinely hard. Brett and Ellen separate stress from anxiety, explain the two very different groups of children who experience school refusal, and challenge the idea that success always means getting a child back into the classroom as fast as possible.
Want to have a positive impact on thousands of families like you?
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Key Points
What the data tells us
Why mid-year is when it often surfaces
When this episode matters for your family
What School Refusal Actually Is
Stress, Anxiety, or Something Deeper?
The Two Groups of Children
Rethinking What “Success” Means
Practical First Steps for Right Now
Frequently Asked Questions
My nine-year-old has stomach aches every Sunday night. Is this anxiety, or am I overreacting?
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What is the difference between school refusal and a child just not wanting to go to school?
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Is it okay to take my child out of school instead of pushing them back in?
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Can I keep my child learning if they can only manage part-time school, or no school for a while?
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Why This Episode Matters
Your Family, Your Journey
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Related Shows Based on Content Similarities
Discover shows related to Future Learners, based on actual content similarities. Explore podcasts with similar topics, themes, and formats, backed by real data.
If you are registered, or partway through an application, nothing about your obligations has changed.
The draft Policy states that the education of a child is primarily the responsibility of the child’s parents, and that parents may choose either school enrolment or homeschooling registration. Ellen believes this is really important, because the policy language preserves parents’ right to homeschool.
The second is flexibility. Parents write the education plan, decide how it is delivered, and can amend it during a registration period so it stays fit for purpose, including for children with disability or additional needs.
Brett points out you do not need a diagnosis in the family to benefit from the flexibility. The plan is meant to bend around the child in front of you, whoever that child is.
Both hosts agree that flexibility and structure are not opposite. Having a base to work from makes it possible to be flexible, try new things, and know you’re within the guardrails and ticking off all the boxes.
This is where there is some uncertainty, and Ellen states it is one of the things that makes parents most nervous.
The draft requires parents to keep records demonstrating how the child’s education plan is being implemented, and how the requirements and conditions of registration are being met. That is a broad requirement, and the FAQs confirm there is no mandatory quantity or format of evidence. Learning journals, checklists, excursions and digital portfolios are offered as examples rather than requirements.
The states handle this differently. Queensland tells you exactly how many pieces of work to supply and what they should look like. NSW gives you no number or format of evidence at all.
“Broadness is wonderful, but it can also be unsettling, because it then comes down to your Authorised Person to say, actually, this is too much, or this isn’t enough. That’s where parents can start to feel a little bit like it’s shifting sand.”
— Ellen Brown
Brett’s read is that breadth leads to ambiguity, and ambiguity leads to frustration and anxiety. He wants the Department to publish a minimum, so families know whether they are meeting the mark.
As a result, the NSW homeschooling community often fills the gap itself, comparing notes in forums about what different APs expect. It should be a lot clearer for families.
When an AP turns up, it is not just to see what has been done, but to ensure that you’ve ticked the boxes aligned to the curriculum.
Euka is built around this. Every lesson carries the curriculum code it maps to, families can upload work into the portal for safekeeping, and the registration and reporting service turns completed lessons and parent comments into one report you can hand over.
Ellen homeschooled in NSW for 12 years, with different APs, and knows what it’s like to prepare reporting. The services at Euka reflect her experience and are built to help families feel confident in what they are putting forward.
Once you apply, the Department organises your first meeting with an Authorised Person for your area. They review your plan and make a recommendation.
Most APs come out of the mainstream school system. Retired principals, experienced teachers, people who know what a good education looks like from the inside of a classroom. Ellen has never met one who came from a homeschooling background and says it will be nice when that finally happens.
Whether you are visited at home depends on the AP. In Ellen’s experience, some APs need to come to the house, and others are happy with a video call or a meeting at a library or community centre. It is worth asking rather than assuming.
Ellen describes an AP as closer to a learning coach than an education inspector, and most turn up asking how they can support you. Other parents have told her they came away feeling judged rather than supported. Nobody is entirely comfortable when someone arrives to assess something they care about this much.
If your child is highly anxious, the draft FAQs allow you to request that the AP does not sight your child, usually supported by information from their medical or allied health providers.
It is highly likely, and the Department’s own numbers back this up.
“If you’re stressing out about your approval, chances are you’ll be approved, because you’ve already thought it through.”
— Ellen Brown
In 2025, the Department refused 5.2% of applications. But most refusals (3.5%) were because the applicant could not be reached for assessment after repeated attempts over several weeks. Another 0.94% were refused because the child was not eligible, including living outside NSW or submitting an incomplete form. Applications refused because the requirements were not met were very low at 0.61%.
If you have an education plan covering the NSW curriculum and you attend your assessment, you are in good shape. Euka has not had a family go through the process and fail to get approved.
Some families are concerned about a shorter registration period. The draft Procedures allow an AP to recommend less than the full term where areas for improvement have been identified, or where there are current concerns about the child’s safety. Neither phrase is defined in any of the documents.
Brett delves into both sides. A policy has to cover every household, including the small number where home is not a safe place, and you cannot write a rule for that without some breadth. What he wants is more clarity for families: if a family is given three months instead of twelve, tell them exactly what caused it and exactly what must change.
There is a review pathway if a recommendation goes against you: an internal review by a different Authorised Person, then an external review at NCAT. Ellen notes that a review by a second person in the same role is limited on its own, and that the external step is what makes it a real safeguard.
A year before these drafts were written, NSW was told to speed up registration.
The Auditor-General’s report Alternative school settings and home schooling, published on 25 September 2025, recommended that the Department of Education work with the homeschooling community on reform, including consideration of “expedited registration processing times to shorten transition periods”. The audit found the time to decide an application had already grown 63 per cent, from 40 calendar days in 2019 to 65 in 2024, while applications rose by around 125 per cent.
The draft Procedures answer that with an indicative processing timeframe of up to 12 weeks, and the FAQs confirm that until registration is approved, the child must remain enrolled at school. A family worried about their child’s wellbeing is directed back to the school principal.
Twelve weeks is 84 days. The audit’s figure for how long a decision was already taking in 2024 was 65, which makes the draft’s indicative ceiling longer than the problem the audit asked the Department to fix.
Ellen recommends keeping the safeguards in place and adding a defined urgent or provisional pathway: the parent still lodges the application, still demonstrates an education plan, still provides information about the child’s circumstances, and the assessment still runs its course. The child gets a lawful bridge in the meantime.
Brett’s frustration is with the evidence base underneath the decision. Euka asks every family their primary reason for choosing homeschooling. Around one in four name bullying, and one in three name bullying or social issues (which often have bullying as an underlying factor).
The Department’s published 2025 data records bullying as the reason for 0.11% of applications. The explanation for that number is in how the survey is delivered.
The application form offers tick boxes for philosophical, religious and special learning needs, and nothing else. Every other reason, including bullying, must be written by hand in a free-text box. In 2025, 33 per cent of applications landed in “other” and a further 21 per cent answered nothing at all.
In the initial figure, bullying looks like a non-issue. But the reality is, it is skewed by how the data is collected, which may explain why the draft policy and procedures do not address bullying or provide an urgent pathway for homeschool registration.
“As a parent, the last thing I would ever do is want to put my child back into an environment that I need them to be removed from.”
— Brett Campbell
The route runs through your school principal, rather than the Department.
The principal can grant an attendance exemption. It means your child stays enrolled but is lawfully absent, which is exactly the bridge families need while an application is processed.
Ellen’s advice is to go to that meeting with your education plan in your hand. A principal carries legal responsibility for a child on their roll, and a parent who arrives with a clear plan for the term is much easier to say yes to than a parent who arrives with just a request. Many families join a program before they are registered for precisely this reason, because they need the plan anyway.
If the school will not move, a letter from your GP, paediatrician, psychologist or counsellor explaining the impact of the school environment carries weight in that conversation. Some principals are genuinely good at this and will support you straight away. Some have never seen homeschooling done well and assume it means no schooling at all.
Two things worth knowing once your child is home:
Nobody expects lessons in week one. A child coming out of a stressful school situation needs time to decompress first. They don’t need to jump in and start doing their homeschooling plan straight away.
Having lessons available still helps. What Euka sees is that children who know their peers are moving on without them get more anxious, not less. Knowing the same topics are there when they are ready gives them security.
There is also a middle path a lot of families miss. If you are trialling a term away, or working through school refusal, you can stay enrolled under a partial attendance or exemption arrangement without registering for homeschooling. Schools are often willing to support that, particularly when there is a credible education plan behind it, and it leaves the door open for a staged return if the family wants it.
If your child is struggling with how they are feeling, please talk to someone you trust. You can also reach Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 or Lifeline on 13 11 14, free, 24 hours a day.
Most of the anxiety in NSW right now comes from not knowing what the rules mean for your family.
The parts you control are the ones that decide your outcome: your education plan, the way you keep records, and what you take into a meeting with a principal or an Authorised Person. Get those right, and you’re very likely to be okay.
The consultation has closed. The final policy isn’t written yet, and an urgent pathway is still worth pressing for.
If you are working out what your own registration year looks like, our Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling covers registering legally in your state, choosing and structuring a program, building a daily rhythm, supporting a child who learns differently, and knowing your child is progressing.
It is nine short video modules, about two and a half hours, hosted by Brett and Ellen. Free and self-paced. Start the free homeschooling course.
Not yet. The NSW Department of Education released draft Policy, Procedures and FAQ documents on 27 July 2026, and consultation closed on 10 August 2026. The current Guidelines remain in effect until the new policy is finalised, so registered families and applications in progress carry on unchanged.
Learning journals, checklists, excursions, digital portfolios, work samples, or a combination. The draft FAQs list these as examples and set no mandatory quantity or format. What your records have to do is show how your education plan is being delivered and how the work connects to the NSW curriculum, so keep that link visible as you go.
NSW does not publish a number, which is why experiences differ between areas. Keep enough to show coverage across the plan you wrote, with your own notes on how each part went.
An Authorised Person is authorised by the Department to assess your application, meet with you, and make a recommendation. Most come from mainstream teaching or school leadership backgrounds. Home visits are the default, but some APs will meet at a library or community centre or by video call, so it is worth asking.
Usually yes, the AP is required to sight the child during the visit. The draft FAQs allow you to request approval for your child not to be sighted, and the Department will generally want supporting information from your child’s medical or allied health providers explaining why a visit could affect them.
Almost certainly, if you apply with an education plan covering the NSW curriculum and you are contactable for your assessment.
The draft Procedures allow an Authorised Person to recommend a shorter period where the assessment identifies areas for improvement, or where there are current concerns about the child’s safety. Neither term is defined in the draft.
Yes. You can request an internal review, which goes to a different Authorised Person, and you are entitled to one internal review of the same decision. If that affirms the original recommendation, you can apply to NCAT for an external review, generally within 28 days of being notified.
Not through the registration process itself. Under the draft, your child must remain enrolled until the Certificate of Registration is issued. The available route is an exemption from attendance or a partial attendance plan, granted by your school principal, and a GP or psychologist letter can support that request.
Not if your child stays enrolled. Schools can support a partial attendance plan or an exemption without you registering for homeschooling, and that is common for families trialling a term or working through school refusal. Having a clear education plan makes those conversations much easier.
Ellen Brown is Euka’s co-founder and Head of Education. She is a qualified teacher, a mother of five, and has homeschooled in NSW for 12 years across many different Authorised Persons.
Brett Campbell is Euka’s co-founder, Chairman and CEO.
This article is general information about NSW homeschooling registration, not legal or clinical advice. The NSW Department of Education sets registration requirements, and the draft documents discussed here are not yet in force. If you are worried about your child’s mental health, please speak to your GP or a registered psychologist.
Read the full episode transcript
Hosted by Brett Campbell and Ellen Brown. Future Learners is the podcast for parents and students learning to thrive with homeschooling in Australia.
Teachers are leaving mainstream school for the same reasons students are.
Rebecca says the research shows homeschooled young people are advantaged both socially and academically.
The size of that advantage varies. At one end of the range, the effect is mild, and schooling and homeschooling make little measurable difference. At the other end, homeschooled students are clearly ahead of their mainstream schooled peers.
The evidence comes from meta-analyses, which pool the findings of every available study on a topic. Across the key learning areas, homeschooled students tend to do as well as or better than their peers in school. Maths sometimes trails English and the social sciences, but in the main these young people are outperforming their mainstream schooled peers.
Rebecca names university entry as the second misconception, and her answer is direct. Homeschooled students can go to university, and there are many ways in.
The example she gives is vocational. At the university where she works, a Certificate IV in any subject is enough to be accepted into teaching, which means the pathway does not depend on an ATAR.
Two things in the conversation explain the pattern, and neither is about the curriculum.
The first is parent engagement. Parent engagement is one of the best predictors of educational success, and no cohort is more engaged than a parent sitting down one-to-one with their own child.
Rebecca’s example is a child stuck on squared numbers. A parent can trace it back to shaky times tables, fix that, and then explain that the small two does not mean multiply by two. Then they can keep going, because no bell is going to end the lesson.
The second is mastery. In a timetabled day, a subject stops after 70 minutes regardless of where a child is up to.
“We work towards mastery in homeschooling. We don’t work towards mastery in school. After 70 minutes, maths stops mattering.”
– Dr. Rebecca English
At home there is no rule about how long anything takes. If geography is going well, there is no reason to stop at Australia’s capitals; you could move on to other countries. On the other hand, if a particular topic is not working, you can leave it and come back to it later.
Socialisation is the other half of what Rebecca describes as advantaged, and it is the misconception she hears most often.
Some of it comes down to how safe a child feels asking a question. As Rebecca puts it, admitting you do not know your eight times tables at home is not shameful, because there is nobody to be embarrassed in front of.
Ellen’s experience matches, and she says no environment is as nurturing as home. Families often arrive worried that a child is a year behind in a subject, which is a strange idea in homeschooling, because a child is simply where they are. Once that child is free to say they do not understand something, they frequently go scooting ahead.
What Ellen values most is the change in children’s beliefs about themselves. A child who has decided they are hopeless at maths has usually just missed some steps.
That belief is no longer set by who else is in the room. As Ellen puts it, these children are no longer limited by who is in their class or by what a teacher thinks they are capable of.
Rebecca defines agency as your ability to control your world and your surroundings, which in education means your learning experience.
Her view is that this has been steadily withdrawn. Over the past two decades, curriculum and teaching methods have both been overly centralised and standardised.
“When we’re talking about agency in an academic sense, what we mean is your ability to control your world and your surroundings. And in terms of education, it’s your learning experiences.”
– Dr. Rebecca English
The reason it matters is motivation. Intrinsic motivation is what gets a child to start something difficult they don’t particularly feel like doing, and Rebecca believes control and choice feed it directly.
The practical version is simple enough to try this week. Rather than running the day by the clock, you agree what needs to be done and let the child have some say in the order and the pace. Her recommendation is to set out the work for the day and leave how they arrange their time up to them.
Ellen recognises the pattern from her own parenting. The moment you tell a child they have to do something, it becomes the last thing they want to do. Give them the same list with room to move, and it tends to get done.
Choice can also sit inside the learning itself. Rebecca gives the example of a child who must cover algebra but can do so through something they care about, whether that is cooking, bikes, or anything else.
At Euka, this shows up in how lessons are built. Alongside the content, there is usually a hands-on activity, a digital activity and a downloadable sheet, so a child has some say in how they learn something and how they show what they know.
The same applies at the weekly level. Families can follow a week plan that moves across subjects, or a subject plan that lets a child stay with science for three weeks if that is where their interest is.
Schools run on time. Most workplaces now run on tasks.
Rebecca’s example is that if you finish your work early while working from home, nobody minds if you put a load of laundry on. The work is done, and that is what is being measured. Her conclusion is that in many ways homeschooling prepares a child better for the world we live in.
It reframes one of the most common objections families hear: what happens when the child gets to the real world. A child who has spent years managing their own workload against deadlines has been practising the exact skill most jobs require. Our guide to how homeschooling prepares children for the real world goes through the other skills that carry across.
Ellen raises the obvious complication. A child arriving from school may have had very little say in anything, and handing them a blank day is not a plan.
Rebecca’s answer is that it is gradual, and she compares it to teaching a child to ride a bike. You hold on, you hold on, and eventually you let go.
She names three things that help in the meantime. Allow time to adjust to a workflow that is not organised around a bell, target learning towards things the child is genuinely interested in, and set some limits on screen time.
Some children need a deadline to get moving. Others prefer to start immediately and clear it. The point is that they learn which one they are.
For many families, the first stretch is not about workload at all. Rebecca notes that school refusal is strongly correlated with anxiety and neurodivergence, so many children arrive carrying a good deal of stress.
A significantly anxious child is not going to move straight into formal lessons that look like school. What they need first is space and time to heal after a very stressful experience.
She is direct that it does not have to look like school. Older, more integrated models have a lot to offer, where a child interested in bikes can reach maths, science, English and history through that one subject.
She is equally clear that this is not something to manage alone. Government data shows that neurodivergence is more common among homeschooled children than in the school population, so working with psychologists and therapists matters.
The conversation then turns to a group nobody applies this lens to. Rebecca points out that teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and her reading is that many are unhappy for the same reasons the children are.
As she puts it, we do not talk about teachers as school refusing, or as “school can’t”, but in many ways they are. They are just as anxious as the young people in their care.
She traces it back to agency. Teachers have lost the capacity to shape learning around the children actually in front of them, which is the one thing home educators can still do.
That takes her somewhere unexpected. If a government genuinely wanted fewer families choosing home education, she argues the answer is not aimed at families at all: re-engage teachers with their classes and give them room to manage learning the way home educators do.
She is careful not to lay this at the feet of schools or teachers. The settings have narrowed for everyone inside them, and her view is that teachers would do this differently if they could.
Ellen notes the ground is already shifting. In Queensland, education authorities now meet with homeschooling families regularly and ask how they can support them, and families there describe the relief of no longer feeling like the educational police are on their back.
Ellen closes by asking Rebecca for her own definition. Her answer is to meet a child in the moment, and to understand that those are just moments and that those moments will change. It is about showing a young person how to love learning.
She does not believe there is a child who cannot learn something, and she has a story that explains why. While teaching a certificate class, she was writing her master’s thesis, and one student, the one flagged on the roll as the hardest to teach, asked what she was working on.
She explained the theory she was using: that your life experiences prepare you to succeed in some settings and not others, so some children arrive at school with what that setting rewards and some do not.
The student immediately connected it to his own life and moved into a genuinely thoughtful account of his own path through school. This was a child who could barely write his own name, engaging with philosophical thought.
“There is no young person who can’t learn. We just need to communicate with them in the right way. And that’s what education is, it’s communication.”
– Dr Rebecca English
The research Rebecca cites points that way on average. Homeschooled students do as well or better than their mainstream schooled peers, socially and academically.
She is careful about the size of that advantage, which ranges from negligible to large depending on the study. The two things she credits are parent engagement and the freedom to work towards mastery.
Meta-analyses show homeschooled students performing as well as or better than their mainstream schooled peers across the learning areas. The size of the advantage varies between studies.
Rebecca names socialisation as one of the two biggest misconceptions about home education. Her reading of the research is that these young people are advantaged socially as well as academically.
Yes, and Rebecca is clear there are many pathways in. She gives the example of a Certificate IV in any subject being enough to be accepted into teaching at the university where she works.
Two reasons come up in the episode. Parent engagement is one of the best predictors of educational success, and homeschooling allows a child to work towards mastery rather than stopping when a bell rings.
It is a child’s ability to control their own learning: the order in which they work, how they use their time, and, where possible, how they approach a topic. Rebecca ties this directly to intrinsic motivation.
Enough that they are managing something, and not so much that the day has no shape. The usual starting point is to assign what has to be done and let the child decide when and in what order.
Slowly. Allow time to adjust to a day that is not run by a bell, focus the learning on things they are actually interested in, and set some limits on screens while the habit forms.
That is normal, because the day is no longer padded with bells, recess, lunch, library and handing out sheets. The measure is whether the work is done, not how long it took. Our guide to how many hours a day you should spend homeschooling gives typical ranges by grade.
It can, but Rebecca is clear that the first stretch should focus on settling rather than academics, and that families should work alongside psychologists or therapists where needed.
For a parent lying awake, wondering whether they are doing the right thing, this episode offers something specific to hold on to. The research on social and academic outcomes points one way, and the reasons behind it are not mysterious.
A child who has some say in how they learn, works alongside an engaged parent, and isn’t cut short by a bell tends to do well.
It also gives families an answer to the two questions asked most often, about socialisation and about university.
If this episode has you thinking about what your own week could look like, our Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling covers registering legally in your state, choosing and structuring a curriculum, building a daily rhythm, supporting a child who learns differently, and knowing your child is progressing.
It is nine short video modules, about two and a half hours, hosted by Brett and Ellen. Free and self-paced.
Tina recommends Euka to families who want structure. Asked what she tells a family looking for a structured program, her answer is direct: go to Euka.
Schools vary. Some actively recommend homeschooling. Others resist releasing a child at all.
If a school resists, you have another avenue. State education departments and their home education units have become more open to helping families register.
A structured program does a specific job. It is often what families use while a child settles; it is also helpful if you’re considering putting your child back into mainstream school down the line.
Bullying is often a symptom. Underneath it, there is frequently a diagnosis or an unmet need the school setting could not accommodate.
Social confidence can be rebuilt. Interest-based groups place a child among people who have chosen to be there, across a range of ages.
Work experience insurance starts earlier than most families expect. Insurance is usually a key obstacle, and HEA covers members from age 12.
The questions Tina hears open in much the same way. Where do I find information? How do I start? I am overwhelmed because there is so much out there.
And underneath them, the one that carries the most weight: I am a parent, and I have no idea what I am doing.
Her approach with a new family is to hand over two or three things to look at rather than sending them off to survey everything. That matters because there are no guarantees. Every child is different, every family dynamic is different, and what works well for one child may not suit yours.
Ellen’s own start was much the same, with everyone she met certain their way was the right one. What she took from it is that there are many great ways to do this, and that in the end, you are the only one who will know the right fit for your child.
Tina names the comparison trap directly.
“You look at a family and go, oh, I wish I could do that. But that’s not your family. So you have to work out your own rhythm, and the resources that work for you.”
— Tina Smith, Treasurer, Home Education Association
Tina points new families towards other homeschoolers, as connecting with other families is how you start to see the breadth of what is out there, and what works and what does not.
Tina has seen it go both ways. She describes one family in which the school and the education department worked through the alternatives, found none viable, and told the parent directly that homeschooling was the right path.
She also sees the opposite happen. Some schools do not accept homeschooling as a legitimate option, and some see releasing a child as a matter of authority rather than a family’s decision. In her experience, it can get quite heated.
The school is not your only avenue. State education departments and the home education units within them have become more open to helping families who are being obstructed, and they can intervene.
As Tina puts it, it comes down to knowing who to talk to. HEA publishes state-by-state registration information, and its advocacy work is currently focused on making registration a smoother experience with each state authority.
Ellen adds the reframe worth holding onto. Choosing homeschooling is in the same category as choosing a public school, a private school, or distance education. It is a choice you are entitled to make as a parent.
Some families arrive certain they could never write their own program, and a structured one removes that worry. If that sounds familiar, our episode with a teacher trainer on what actually makes a good teacher is worth a listen, since the answer has very little to do with formal qualifications.
Tina also sees families use a structured program for another reason: to help steady a child. Time to reassess, re-ground them, and settle their emotional state. In her experience, those families often return to school afterwards, which is a legitimate outcome rather than a failure.
Asked what she tells a family in that position, her answer is direct.
“If you want to use a program that is structured, go to Euka.”
— Tina Smith, Treasurer, Home Education Association
The example she gives is a family who arrived from another country, were not confident with an English curriculum, and needed something structured while they moved between states for work. She recommended them to Euka. They kept using it as they changed states, and when they eventually moved back overseas, they did so knowing their children’s education had been properly covered.
That continuity is the point. A complete K-12 curriculum means a family can move house, change states, or travel without the program restarting, and Ellen notes that families use it either way: some take the full program, others take a subject or two as their foundation and build the rest themselves.
Tina built her own program at first. By the time her children reached the middle years, she was less confident, so she bought a program that covered the foundation skills and added her own material on top.
This option worked well for her family, as they layered in what her children were actually interested in, which, for her family, was the part that mattered most.
She is clear that this depends entirely on the child. Her children were academically inclined, and she knows families with very creative children for whom that same core-work approach did not work.
A prescribed curriculum is useful. Being able to flex it is better, because it opens up everything else: nature, museums, libraries, the internet, and the history and geography a family picks up while travelling. Ellen adds that the curriculum is the base, not everything.
Ellen asks about bullying, noting a significant increase in students coming in because of it. Tina confirms she is seeing the same and then adds more context.
Bullying happens for many reasons. As Tina puts it, it could be racism, health, disability, or just because you exist. Our guide to the signs your child may be struggling at school covers what this can look like before it becomes obvious.
She describes bullying as a big proportion of the calls. Still, she says an even bigger one now comes from families whose children are managing a diagnosis such as autism or ADHD. Our tips for homeschooling with ADHD go further into the practical side of this.
What those parents describe is the social side of school becoming overwhelming, in ways the setting could not accommodate.
Ellen draws out the consequences of how this gets reported. Bullying and school refusal are the labels the media reaches for, but they are frequently the visible end of something else. A child managing anxiety or autism inside a system that cannot flex will often find that school becomes very difficult.
Read that way, school refusal describes a setting that is not a good fit for that child, at that time.
Withdrawal, in Tina’s account, buys back what was missing: time to stop, regroup, and learn to manage emotions and triggers in a safe place.
Two episodes cover this from the family’s side. Episode 43 follows a mother who left school-based bullying behind, and Episode 45 specifically addresses school refusal. Episode 23 is one mother’s account of homeschooling with dyslexia, ASD and ADHD.
The worry that stops families here is that leaving school means leaving socialising behind. The episode answers it with a worked example.
Tina describes a family whose child was not fitting in socially at school. They withdrew, then rebuilt from what the child actually liked: art and board games. The child joined a board games group and an art class, and the parent enrolled in the art class alongside them.
That produced an environment the classroom rarely does. The child was learning alongside adults, so they practised interacting with older people. In the board games group, they were among children of different ages, so they learned to build relationships with peers of different ages.
The parent went along too, joining the art classes, which meant the child was building these skills somewhere they already felt safe.
Tina’s point is that these skills travel. A child who has learned to interact with people of different ages carries that into a workplace or a course, along with the ability to recognise a trigger and step away from it.
Ellen adds the observation that reframes the whole concern.
“When you’re in school, your friends are only your friends because they happen to be the same age. That’s why you’re in that group.”
— Ellen Brown
Adult life does not work that way. You find people through shared interest, and you choose them. For a child who has been struggling, being good at something in front of people who care about it can be a platform they have not had before.
Ellen also names something she saw as a teacher. In a classroom, the child who disrupts an activity is often the one with no interest in it, and the cost falls on the interested child.
There is more homeschooling support out there than most families realise, including free resources. It helps to know who handles what.
Euka covers the curriculum and everything attached to it, with lots of free resources available for families: choosing a program, the lessons themselves, tracking progression, reporting, enrolment and your account. Our Help Centre answers the day-to-day questions, and the support team is there for anything it does not. If registration paperwork is the sticking point, our Registration Service prepares the learning plan and documents your state requires, ready for you to submit.
HEA is a great complementary resource: independent advocacy with state authorities, local community connections, member resources and work experience insurance. Tina notes that HEA has been working alongside Euka and other organisations to make registration a smoother experience with the state bodies.
The Home Education Association runs a free national helpline on 1300 72 99 91, weekdays 9 am to 5 pm. Callers speak with experienced homeschoolers, and the call covers registration, re-registration, and issues with the state department you are registered with. That is worth knowing about whether or not you ever join anything.
Membership adds a set of teaching and learning resources on top of that, including software and reading materials for younger children. The current list is on HEA’s member benefits page.
Some of their resources will add additional value for Euka families. Ellen picks out one example on air: Story Box Library, HEA’s reading resource for younger children, works well with Euka’s bring-your-own-novel option, where a family swaps the term’s set novel for a different book while keeping the same skills work.
One item is worth calling out because so few families know it exists. Work experience placements usually stall on insurance, since an unpaid student is not covered by an employer’s policy.
Some state education departments offer their own coverage, though Tina notes that in certain states it only starts at age 14. HEA covers members from age 12, across all states, with an agreement signed by the parent and the supervising employer. Details are on their insurance page.
Ellen’s point is that this opens up something school-rationed. She had one week of work experience in Grade 10. A homeschooled student who wants to try several different workplaces during their senior years can, and our episode on when to do work experience covers how to time it well.
You register with the education authority in your state or territory, then choose how your child will learn: a structured program, your own plan, or a mix. Requirements differ by state, so check yours first. Our guide to homeschooling in Australia covers registration, and our episode on registration and reporting goes through it in detail.
Start with whoever provides your curriculum, since most day-to-day questions are really program questions. Euka families have the support team, the Help Centre and our free homeschooling course, which walks through registering, structuring a program and building a daily rhythm.
For the things that sit outside a curriculum, the Home Education Association runs a free national helpline on 1300 72 99 91, staffed by experienced homeschoolers, covering advocacy, re-registration and disputes with the state department you are registered with.
Local homeschool community groups and support groups are the usual starting point, and they are worth joining early. Tina’s point is that meeting other homeschooling families shows the range of what actually works, rather than assuming the first approach you saw is the only one.
Some resist. If that happens, the school is not your only avenue: contact your state education department or its home education unit, both of which have become more willing to step in. HEA can tell you which office to approach.
Both work, and the choice depends on your child. A structured program suits families who want the core covered without having to write it themselves, and Tina’s approach was to buy a program for the foundation skills and add her children’s interests on top.
Not necessarily. School groups children by age, whereas interest-based activities group them by their choices across a range of ages. The catch is that it does not happen on its own, so you will need to put one or two regular activities in place.
It is one of the biggest reasons families are now calling HEA. The value is the ability to adjust the pace and social load in ways a classroom cannot, and to spend the first stretch on regulation rather than academics.
It removes the immediate problem, which is sometimes exactly what a child needs. Tina’s caution is to look at what sat underneath the bullying as well, because an unmet need travels with the child if it goes unaddressed.
Yes, and often earlier than in school. Insurance is the usual obstacle since employers do not cover unpaid students, and HEA covers its members from age 12 across all states with a signed work experience agreement.
This episode is for the practical questions that arrive when you’re considering or starting out homeschooling: what to do when a school will not let your child go, whether to use a structured program or build your own, and how a child who struggled socially at school starts to rebuild.
The answers are specific. Which office to contact when the school digs in, what a structured program is genuinely good for, and why a board games group did more for one child’s confidence than the classroom did.
It maps out how to find support and build confidence in your homeschooling decisions.
If you want to go further on the questions this episode raises, these are the places to start.
The free course. Our Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling covers registering legally in your state, choosing and structuring a curriculum, building a daily rhythm, supporting a child who learns differently, and knowing your child is progressing. It is a set of nine short video modules, hosted by Brett and Ellen, free and self-paced. Start the free course.
If you enrol with Euka. Our Registration Service prepares the learning plan and registration documents your state requires, ready for you to download and submit. It is an optional add-on for enrolled families, not a general registration service.
Reach HEA directly. The free helpline is 1300 72 99 91, weekdays 9 am to 5 pm. Membership plans are on the pricing page, and a set of free resources is available to everyone.
Skills outlast content. How to learn, think and adapt are transferable to everything. This is much more valuable than the content itself.
Watching is not learning. Knowledge is unlikely to stick without practice and application.
Adapting the material is expected, not cheating. Change the activity, keep the skill. Children engage more if they feel what they are learning is relevant to their life.
Ellen puts the hardest version of this to Danielle. A parent starts homeschooling, they did not finish Grade 11 and 12 themselves, and now they are responsible for a senior student.
Danielle does not soften her answer.
One thing I’ve observed is that formal training in education doesn’t necessarily produce a good teacher, and great teachers come without formal education.
— Danielle McGregor
Her point is not that training is worthless. It is that the qualification is not what makes the difference, and she says it as someone who develops teachers professionally.
What she tells her volunteers is that they already carry most of what the job asks for: their experience, their knowledge, their personality. If you have ever learned anything yourself, a language, a trade, an instrument, a recipe, you already know what learning feels like from the inside, including the part where it is hard.
In Episode 48, Euka parent David Smith describes the same belief from the other side, as the trap of assuming a trained teacher must be better at teaching your child than you are.
Danielle names three things, and a parent already holds all of them.
Nobody knows your children the way that you do. Nobody learns in the same way. And so someone coming in from the outside and offering them a cookie-cutter method is not going to work for everybody. But for your child, you know what will work.
— Danielle McGregor
A classroom teacher has a term and thirty children. You have years and one child, which means you do not have to get this right on day one. Danielle’s advice is to muddle through, work it out, and protect the relationship while you do, because the relationship itself feeds the learning.
When Ellen raises how much difference it makes for a child to feel loved and accepted, Danielle points out this is not sentiment. People learn best where stress is lower, where they feel accepted, and where they are free to make mistakes.
That matters because real learning is uncomfortable. A great deal of it happens in the struggle, and a child will only stay in the struggle if they are certain the adult beside them is on their side.
This is the most practically useful stretch of the conversation, and it turns on a distinction Danielle uses constantly: covering content is not the same as teaching a skill.
What we actually keep from a lifetime of learning, she argues, is not the content but the skill of learning itself. How to think, how to analyse, how to decide, how to notice what genuinely interests us.
Those skills transfer. The content mostly does not.
That is good news for a parent, because it moves the job away from knowing every answer.
Imagine paying for a trumpet lesson where the teacher plays beautifully for the full hour while your child watches. Danielle would not pay that teacher to teach her child. The child has learned nothing, and often feels worse, because they cannot do what they just watched someone do effortlessly. Teaching well requires breaking down a task and guiding through the skills, with opportunity to practice and fail.
Her second example lays out four depths of learning.
Being told how to bake a cake teaches you a little. Watching someone bake it teaches you more. Baking it yourself, with an adult standing back as support rather than taking over, teaches you more again.
Then comes the step most people skip: taking the recipe and changing it, turning the chocolate cake into the caramel one you actually wanted.
The last step is what proves understanding. Following a recipe proves you can follow a recipe. Changing it proves you know how it works.
The same trajectory applies whether the subject is baking or soccer.
Ellen connects this to how the Euka program is built, where each lesson moves through a Learn section, then moves into a practice section where they do something hands-on with the information. Then they go through and apply their learning.
The temptation, especially for new homeschooling parents, can be to finish the Learn part and mark the lesson done. Danielle’s advice: you do need to impart information, but without the practice and the application it is very unlikely to stick.
Episode 24 goes further into how learning actually sticks.
Yes, and Danielle believes you should.
Asked about teaching styles, she corrects the premise first. The old research saying we each have one fixed learning style has been largely debunked. Most of us like variety.
What she offers instead is more useful. Know your own preferences well enough not to assume they are your child’s, and engage as many senses as you can.
Then watch for the moment your child comes alive, and pay attention to what caused it.
She also suggests an approach that works well beyond schoolwork. When something your child does irritates or surprises you, notice the reaction, then get curious about it rather than acting on it.
This extends to the material itself, including Euka’s own. Nothing should be written to be used exactly as it is, she says, because no two learners are the same.
Ellen makes it concrete. If a measurement activity asks your child to pour water between jugs and your child would rather bake, bake. The skill being applied has not changed.
For parents who find that daunting, Danielle’s advice comes from her work with overwhelmed volunteers: break the task into its steps, slow down, and connect it to something in your child’s actual life.
Episode 23 shows this working, where one mother lifted her dyslexic son’s reading level by rebuilding the material around his love of dogs.
If you have been putting off homeschooling because you are not a teacher, this episode removes that specific obstacle, and it does so from a highly credible source.
Danielle’s work is evidence that untrained adults can teach well when they are given the right tools and support.
It is worth being clear about the limits of that. Danielle is not promising it takes no effort, or that you will never feel out of your depth. Her view is: the qualification does not stand between you and doing this well.
You are your child’s greatest advocate. And your love for them, your commitment to them, and your creativity, and all that you model to them, is a gift that you can give them.
— Danielle McGregor
If you want to go further on the questions this episode raises, these are the places to start.
The free course. Our Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling covers registering legally in your state, choosing and structuring a curriculum, building a daily rhythm, supporting a child who learns differently, and knowing your child is progressing. Nine short video modules, hosted by Brett and Ellen, free and self-paced. Start the free course.
Related episodes. Episode 49, The Real Benefits of Homeschooling, where a Euka graduate answers the same question from a student’s point of view, and Episode 47, Preparing Your Children for the Real World.
Real questions Australian parents ask about qualifications, confidence, and what homeschooling really requires.
No. Many of the people Danielle trains arrive without the qualification and become good teachers anyway. The credential is not the variable that decides whether this works.
Intelligence was never the requirement. It asks you to know your child, to learn beside them, and to stay patient while they find something hard. A qualification measures none of those.
Have you ever taught yourself something, or stuck with something difficult until it clicked? That is the experience you draw on. Danielle’s point is that your schooling is not the qualification here, your memory of learning is.
Say so, and look it up together. Ellen describes a long-time Euka parent who found this one of his most powerful teaching tools, because learning alongside your child models curiosity and shows them it is safe not to know.
Look at what your child can do afterwards, not what they sat through. If they can use the skill somewhere new, it has landed. If the lesson ended at the explanation, expect it to fade.
No. Danielle’s position is that material which cannot be adapted is not worth much. Keep the skill the activity is practising, and change everything around it to suit your child.
Treat it as part of the teaching. Acknowledge it in front of your children and work out together why it did not go to plan, which models something more useful than getting it right first time.
Brett, Ellen and the team will give it a listen. Keep an ear out — we'll let you know if your message features in an upcoming episode.
The benefit she rates highest: following your passions. Jessica used homeschooling’s flexibility to get years ahead in biology, which set her on the path to studying nutrition.
Socialisation came easily. Far from the isolated stereotype, Jessica’s week was packed with groups, sport, and community.
Mixing with all ages, adults, older kids, and younger kids, taught her to communicate far more broadly than a single-age classroom would have.
A childhood not ruled by someone else’s schedule. Jessica describes an enriching childhood with the freedom to travel, work, and follow her interests.
Homeschooling made Jessica and her siblings the reliable hires who could work during school hours.
How Jessica’s friends moved into TAFE, university, and careers, often earlier than their mainstream-schooled peers.
The real reason families stay. From thousands of enrolment conversations, Jessica saw families arrive for one reason and stay for a completely different one.
From student to staff. Jessica went from graduating Euka’s senior program to helping thousands of new families through their own questions.
When Ellen asks Jessica for the real upside of homeschooling, the thing you would tell a friend rather than read on a website, her answer is not about convenience or flexibility for its own sake. It is about depth.
My favourite thing about homeschooling is being able to prioritise things from a young age. For example, I loved biology, so I got years ahead in that, because that’s all I really wanted to do. And now I’m studying nutrition.
— Jessica Garner
This is the part of the homeschooling benefit that rarely gets named. In a mainstream classroom, the bell rings after forty minutes and the class moves on whether or not a child has found what they love. Homeschooling let Jessica follow a genuine interest as far as it would take her, and that interest became a career direction before she had even finished school.
It is also worth noting what this says about how homeschooling actually works day to day. This was not passive box-ticking. As Jessica got older, she describes taking the reins of her own learning.
As you get to year seven and get older, you start to get that independence and realise what you actually want to focus on. So as soon as we started to become our own people, we were able to just focus on the subjects we really loved.
The single biggest worry parents raise about home education is socialisation, and Jessica has been answering it her whole life. Her answer flips the stereotype on its head, because people are genuinely surprised when they learn she was homeschooled.
I’ve had actual people surprised when I tell them I was homeschooled, because they go, oh, you’re not, you seem to be able to have a conversation relatively well.
— Jessica Garner
Far from being isolated, Jessica’s problem was almost the opposite: her week was so full she jokes there were more social events than days in it. And it came easily, because her mum made it part of everyday life.
We had a million social events because my mum was a social butterfly, so she just filled our week.
— Jessica Garner
That week was ice skating every fortnight, basketball, a homeschool group that ran a different sport every term, and Monday and Wednesday groups doing drama and debate. Jessica and her sister even played basketball on a team through a mainstream school, made real friends there, and stayed with the team for years. The only awkward part, she laughs, was walking through the school in their own clothes rather than a uniform.
The deeper benefit she describes is who homeschooled children learn to talk to. Because homeschool groups mix everyone together, she was comfortable with adults, older kids, and younger kids from a young age, and she credits that for how well it prepared her for life after school.
We were actually able to learn to socialise with all age groups from a very young age, which prepared us so much better for the real world. You don’t just sit with your age group the whole day listening to a teacher, instead you’re actually supposed to be able to communicate with lots of different people.
— Jessica Garner
Jessica is honest that this depends on a family staying open to the world, and the one time she has seen homeschooling go wrong is when families cut themselves off and stop socialising. But in her experience, a connected, social homeschooling life is not just possible, it is the norm. If you want to see both sides before you decide, our piece on the disadvantages of homeschooling is an honest read.
One benefit that surprises people is how well homeschooling sets a young person up for work. Jessica and her siblings all found jobs early.
As soon as we turned fourteen, we were looking for work, and I got a job at Subway. My boss would keep asking me if I had any homeschool friends that wanted to work there too, because we were hard workers, and we could work during school hours, unlike school kids.
— Jessica Garner
The flexibility that lets a child go deep on biology is the same flexibility that lets a fourteen-year-old take a shift on a weekday morning. It is a small example of a bigger pattern: homeschooled young people are used to managing their own time.
For many parents, the real fear underneath everything is the future. Will my child fall behind? Will they be able to get into university? Jessica’s answer is grounded in what she watched her friends do.
I had tons of friends who finished school quite early, then they immediately started a TAFE course, and then they got into university the next year, starting university earlier because they could work at their own pace.
— Jessica Garner
She makes an argument that many parents do not expect: that homeschooling is actually good preparation for university, precisely because of the independence it builds.
Homeschooling is actually a better preparation for university when it comes to the independent side of it. You’re kind of meant to show up as an adult, you go to your classes, no one’s going to remind you if you’re not showing up.
The full-circle part of Jessica’s story is what makes this episode rare. After Subway and a bit of work experience in Euka’s Sydney office, she joined the support team and spent her days helping families work through their questions.
I feel like I’ve been defending homeschooling my whole life. So that passion, coupled with the desire to work hard, went really well.
— Jessica Garner
That vantage point gave Jessica something no single family story can: pattern recognition across thousands of conversations. And the pattern she describes is one every hesitant parent should hear. Most families arrive with one reason, often that their child was being bullied, but that is almost never why they stay.
That was never the reason they stayed homeschooling. Their family got to spend more time with their kids, they got to learn the way they learnt best. It only took a couple of terms to get up to speed, and they were finally learning in the way that works for them.
— Jessica Garner
If you are a parent researching home education, you have probably read plenty of provider websites and still felt unsure. This episode is the thing that is hard to find: an honest, first-hand account from a graduate, followed by the perspective of someone who has since heard your exact worries thousands of times over.
Jessica’s message to a nervous parent is the heart of it.
No one is going to care about your child succeeding more than you. You don’t need to worry about having a teaching degree. Your child is going to succeed best with somebody like you backing them up every step of the way. So don’t stress about it.
— Jessica Garner
And that is exactly why we built our free course. You do not have to piece all of this together alone.
Ready to feel confident about homeschooling? Our free, self-paced course, A Parent’s Guide to Confident Homeschooling, covers everything we wish someone had told us in week one, from the practical side of registration and reporting through to understanding your child’s learning needs and planning their pathway. Nine short video modules, hosted by Ellen and Brett, completely free. Start the free course today.
Real questions Australian parents ask about the genuine benefits and challenges of homeschooling.
The opposite, in Jessica’s experience. Her week was so full she jokes there were more social events than days in it: ice skating, basketball, drama, debate, and homeschool groups. Because her mum kept them out and about, socialising came easily, and mixing with all ages meant she learned to talk comfortably with adults, older kids, and younger kids from a very young age.
For Jessica it was active and self-directed. As she got older, she chose her own focus and drove her own learning, getting years ahead in the subjects she loved.
“As soon as we started to become our own people, we were able to just focus on the subjects we really loved.”
Jessica’s candid answer is that the risk sits with the family’s effort and openness, not the model itself. Families who cut themselves off from the world and stop socialising are, in her view, not homeschooling well. You can read a fuller, balanced take in our resource on the disadvantages of homeschooling.
Yes. Jessica had friends who finished school early, moved into TAFE, and got into university the next year, often starting earlier because they could work at their own pace. She argues homeschooling is actually good preparation for university, because students are already used to managing their own time. See how homeschooling affects university admissions for the pathways.
From thousands of conversations, Jessica found most families arrive with one reason, often bullying, but stay for completely different ones: more time together, and their child finally learning in a way that works for them.
“It was never the reason they stayed. They stayed for all those other reasons.”
Jessica’s message is reassurance grounded in both sides of the experience: you do not need a teaching degree, and no one will care about your child’s success more than you. A good first step is our free course, A Parent’s Guide to Confident Homeschooling, which walks you through it module by module.
Jessica’s story demonstrates that the real benefits of homeschooling are less about avoiding the downsides of mainstream school and more about what becomes possible when a child has the freedom to follow their interests deeply, learn at their own pace, and build connections across the whole community rather than just within a single-age classroom.
If you are weighing up home education and want to understand what it actually looks like day to day, our free course walks you through everything: how to register, how to choose a curriculum, how to build a rhythm that suits your family, and how to know your child is progressing. Start the Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling today.
Brett, Ellen and the team will give it a listen. Keep an ear out — we'll let you know if your message features in an upcoming episode.
Why they started: persistent bullying and an eldest son on the autism spectrum with ADHD who wasn’t fitting in, with a year-three teacher warning he wouldn’t thrive at high school.
Telling the school: the family quietly ran homeschooling in parallel at first, and found the school more supportive than they’d feared.
The first six to twelve months: hidden strengths surfaced fast, including an undiscovered passion for maths, once the pressure of the classroom was gone.
Keeping it fluid: letting the kids choose subjects and build their own timetable so homeschooling never felt like “school again.”
AI and the internet as tools: using ChatGPT to break maths down step by step, and giving kids the freedom to research anything.
From homeschool to the workforce: an eldest son who “nailed it” from day one in a customer-facing job, and a middle son mapping a pathway towards becoming a GP.
Advice for parents on the fence: you know your kids better than anyone, so don’t leave the decision too long.
Use a whiteboard “who can solve it first” race to make maths feel like a game rather than a chore.
Let a child keep going in a subject they love rather than holding them to one week at a time.
Use “misdirection” when a subject stalls. Switch to PE, the park, or arts and crafts, then come back to it.
Learn alongside your child when a subject scared you at school, instead of pretending to know it all.
Like a lot of families, David’s homeschooling journey didn’t begin with a plan. It began with a problem the school couldn’t solve. His eldest son, a “beautiful, beautiful kid” who is on the autism spectrum and has ADHD, was being bullied, wasn’t fitting in, and David was being called into the office a lot. (If that’s your family’s starting point too, our guide to homeschooling on the spectrum and special needs homeschooling walks through what it can look like.)
David describes a trap many parents fall into: assuming that because someone trained to be a teacher, they must be able to teach your child better than you can. When he searched online, most options overwhelmed him with “oodles and oodles of material” that wouldn’t work around his job and his wife’s day at home. Then the family found Complete Education Australia, which evolved into Euka, with the work laid out in manageable weekly chunks.
Once his son started working through it, David could see a change straight away. He was focussed and giving far more of himself than before.
“The outcome was phenomenal… we could see that he was focussed, that he was actually giving a lot more of himself to his work.”
— David Smith, Euka parent
They applied for homeschool, and, as David puts it, “the rest, literally eight years later, here we are now.”
One of the most common worries for parents leaving mainstream school is how the school will react. David’s family were concerned enough that they ran homeschooling in parallel at first, without telling the school, worried that fighting the system would only invite roadblocks.
In the end, the school was more supportive than they expected. David believes that, deep down, the teachers had his son’s best interests at heart and could see this was something they couldn’t control.
The moment that made the decision for him was a teacher warning that his son, leaving year three, wouldn’t thrive at high school. It was the kind of comment that makes alarm bells ring and sends a parent into overdrive, asking what they can do to make sure their kids get a good education, and a safe one.
Ellen is careful to add that a supportive response isn’t a given for every family. But she reframes the underlying issue warmly: schools often do care, yet the system simply isn’t built for the individual child, with one teacher and 28 children in a classroom. Where a family can share their concerns and get a supportive response, she says, it’s a wonderful thing.
The turning point in David’s story is a mindset shift. Homeschooling only worked once the family stopped trying to recreate school at home. The kids didn’t want to do maths every Monday, David explains, because if they knew maths was coming every Monday, it suddenly became almost like school again. So they let the children choose their subjects and build their own timetable.
Ellen connects this to a deliberate design choice in the Euka program. The lessons are grouped into weeks rather than pinned to named days. There are five maths lessons and five English lessons a week, with no days attached, precisely so families can flow with what suits their child.
David is honest that the first couple of weeks are an adjustment for everyone, and it’s easy to hit the panic button. His advice is to persevere, and to use what his wife calls “misdirection.” If maths isn’t working, go outside, do PE, or get the arts and crafts out, and come back to it later. Nothing, he says, is set in stone.
Maths is the subject that scares parents most, and it’s where David’s story offers the most hope. At school, his eldest was “average, borderline on everything,” and sometimes below. At home, within weeks, a completely different picture emerged.
“We found out he had a passion for maths that had gone undiscovered.”
— David Smith
Two things made the difference. The first was time and patience, without the classroom rushing on to the next thing.
The second was technology. Where a school lesson moves on whether or not a child understood it, AI will wait. David describes sitting down with ChatGPT and asking it to “hold you by the hand,” breaking things down very easily with no rush, especially where maths is concerned.
Ellen builds on this for parents who fear maths themselves. Missing one “little nugget” in maths snowballs, she explains, because maths needs its building blocks, which is why so many adults wrongly decide they’re “hopeless” at it.
Her encouragement is to model curiosity instead of certainty. Even saying to your child, “I actually don’t know that either, let’s have a look together,” is a fantastic lesson in itself.
David’s own family lived this out. His wife, who’d also been left behind in maths at school, learned alongside the kids. And for his middle son, the tool that worked best was low-tech: two whiteboards and a race to see who could solve the question first, because kids love the bragging rights. (For more hands-on ideas along these lines, see our 8 tips for homeschooling with ADHD.)
Beyond any single subject, what David values most is that homeschooling fostered a love of learning “everything and anything.” His middle son now gets on his laptop after school finishes and researches whatever he’s curious about, something David says would have been far harder to nurture in mainstream school.
That freedom produced one of the episode’s most charming stories. David’s middle son came up with his own theory of time travel off his own back, ran it past AI, and the AI gave the playful theory a name of its own: the Van Gogh paradox. It’s a fun anecdote rather than a scientific claim, but David’s point is serious. Homeschooling gives kids the freedom to look at a problem and go and research it themselves. Ellen loves the contrast with a classroom where the teacher is “the facilitator of all knowledge.” Seeing David’s eldest shift from average school reports to blossoming at home, without other kids asking “what are you learning that for?”, is, she says, remarkable.
David is equally clear that this doesn’t happen on autopilot. The program does a lot for you, but a parent still needs to play a part where they can. It isn’t as simple as handing kids the work and letting them do it all themselves.
The proof of the journey, for David, is watching his eldest son move into the workforce. Given how his son started, “literally not working at all,” the family wondered how he’d cope with full days in a customer-facing role.
He exceeded everyone’s expectations. On day one, after his interview, the manager told David, “Yeah, he nailed it. I don’t know who you’re worried about.”
His son now has no issues with customer service or talking to anyone, and the job is giving him life experience and the means to fund whatever he chooses next, whether that’s university or study from home. His middle son, meanwhile, is mapping a pathway towards becoming a GP, and even asked AI to help plot the subjects and states involved.
Ellen reflects on why the transition went so smoothly. You can never change “sliding doors,” she says, but making the decision early gave David’s son all these years to build confidence, self-worth, and communication skills away from the situation he’d been in at school. That’s probably part of why he’s been able to adapt so nicely into the workplace.
Asked what he’d say to a parent still deciding, David keeps it simple. No one knows a child better than their parent, so trust that and take the step.
“You know your kids better than the educator. You’ve birthed them, you’ve raised them, you see them on a regular basis. You’ve got to go and just take that plunge.”
— David Smith
He frames the decision not as a leap out of school forever, but as a chance to see how a child responds to learning where their voice is heard and they’re not stuck at the back of the classroom. His strongest advice for families already living what his family lived through: don’t leave it too long.
David also points parents to community. His details are on the Euka Facebook group, where he’s happy to answer questions, and his kids have documented years of their work on the family’s Happy Homeschool page on Facebook, which he offers as a resource for parents unsure how far the program can take a child.
His closing message to parents who can is to be part of it, even if it’s just five or ten minutes after a long day’s work. Give it that time, have a look through, and be amazed.
Real questions Australian parents ask about homeschooling children with additional needs and whether it’s worth the leap.
Yes. David’s eldest son is on the autism spectrum and has ADHD, and homeschooling gave the family a way to move him out of an environment where he was being bullied and wasn’t thriving. Within weeks at home, hidden strengths surfaced, including a passion for maths that had gone undiscovered. Years later, that same son has moved confidently into the workforce.
Ellen notes that schools often do care and have rules requiring action, but the system isn’t built for the individual child, so a supportive response isn’t a given. In David’s case, the family decided homeschooling was the safest course after a teacher warned his son wouldn’t thrive at high school. Ellen’s wider point is that bullying should be taken as seriously as it would be in any adult workplace.
David’s answer is to keep it fluid. His family found that scheduling maths every Monday made homeschooling feel like school again, so they let the kids choose subjects and help build their own timetable. When a subject stalls, his wife uses “misdirection,” switching to PE, the park, or arts and crafts, then returning to it later.
David uses AI as a patient tutor. Where a classroom moves on whether or not a child understood the lesson, he says you can sit down with ChatGPT and ask it to “hold you by the hand” and break a concept down step by step, with no rush. Ellen adds that parents who fear maths can ask AI to explain a topic “as though I was 10 years old,” and keep it simple until it clicks.
After eight years and three children, David’s biggest regret is not starting sooner. He wishes he’d known “it would have been this simple,” and his advice to parents on the fence is that no one knows a child better than their parent, so don’t leave the decision too long.
In David’s family, yes. His eldest son went from “literally not working at all” to a customer-facing job where, in the manager’s words, he “nailed it” from day one. Ellen suggests the years spent building confidence and communication skills away from a difficult school environment are part of why he adapted so well.
Most conversations about homeschooling stay theoretical. This one doesn’t. David Smith offers eight years of lived experience, including the hard parts: the doubts, the adjustment, and the fear that a child with autism and ADHD might not cope. Then he shows what became possible on the other side.
For any parent whose child is struggling in a system that can’t be built around the individual, David’s story is a reminder that a different path exists, that hidden strengths often surface once the pressure lifts, and that the hardest part is often simply deciding not to wait.
David’s biggest regret was not starting sooner. He wishes he’d known “it would have been this simple.” If you’re on the fence, the hardest part is usually just knowing where to begin, and that’s exactly what our free Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling is built to solve.
It’s a free online course that walks you through everything a new homeschooling parent needs to feel confident from day one: how to legally register, how to choose and structure a curriculum, how to build a daily rhythm that fits your family, how to support a child who learns differently, and how to know your child is progressing. No guesswork, no wading through “oodles and oodles of material,” just clear, step-by-step guidance from the team that has helped thousands of Australian families make the leap.
You don’t need to have it all figured out before you start. You just need a first step. Enrol in the free Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling and give yourself the same head start David wishes he’d had eight years ago.
Brett, Ellen and the team will give it a listen. Keep an ear out — we'll let you know if your message features in an upcoming episode.
Financial literacy and entrepreneurship, Grade 7 and 8 business studies where students run their own small business, building into a practical Grade 9 and 10 financial literacy program covering budgets, tax, and how money actually works.
Developing independent thinkers, lessons written directly to the student, plenty of hands-on activities, and a “why this lesson matters” section so children see the relevance before they start.
Building self-awareness and reflection, a reflection section at the end of every lesson, achievement certificates, and an upload space so students can look back on what they have made with pride.
Creating space for real-world experiences, volunteering, work experience, and the everyday curiosity that the slower pace of homeschooling makes room for.
Connecting learning to the real world, teaching children to weigh opposing views, question a single source, and stay curious about the world around them.
Developing responsibility and self-management, age-appropriate ownership, from doing their own washing to organising their own weekly timetable.
Let young children scan a few grocery items to learn how money and barcodes work.
Give a small daily reward tied to completed lessons so children learn the value of earning something.
Run a nightly gratitude check-in, and lead by sharing your own first.
Use “this or that” choices so a child feels ownership over their decisions.
The starting point Ellen and Brett keep returning to is that the world today’s students are entering is not one where memorising facts is the thing that makes them successful. It is about how they think, not just what they think.
“The world that our students are going into isn’t a world where facts and figures and things like that are going to be the thing that they need to take with them to become successful in their future. So it’s about looking outside of the curriculum.”
— Ellen Brown, co-founder and Head of Education, Euka
Brett frames the urgency around change. As the world moves into an AI-infused future, he argues families will see more change in the next three years than many have seen in decades. That can feel daunting for a parent, but he is clear it is an opportunity, not a doomsday, and the job is to prepare children to think and adapt rather than simply to remember.
The first skill starts in Grade 7 and 8 business studies. Rather than only learning how a business works in theory, Euka students start their own small business and look at a different part of running it each week, from marketing one week to budgets the next.
Ellen shared a real example from a parent she spoke to recently, whose Grade 7 daughter runs a ragdoll cat breeding program from home and applies what she learns in her business subject directly to it.
Brett is careful to say this is not about turning every child into a business owner. It is about the lessons entrepreneurship teaches, whether that is a lemonade stand or simply understanding how commerce works. His everyday example is letting his five-year-old scan a few items at the shops to learn how money and barcodes work, and where the food on the plate actually comes from.
“When you pay, you pay attention.”
— Brett Campbell, CEO and co-founder, Euka
That principle carries into the Grade 9 and 10 financial literacy program, which covers the practical money knowledge many of us wish we had been taught: what tax is, what happens when you buy a car, and how to build and stick to a budget.
“It’s that real practical financial literacy that, I guess we all take for granted, and then of course when you’re a young person you’ve got no idea.”
— Ellen Brown
The second skill is built into the way Euka lessons are written. From the foundation program, lessons are written directly to the student, even before they can read, so the child feels ownership over their learning rather than being talked at through a textbook.
Two other design choices support this. Plenty of hands-on, practical activities give children room to try things with their hands and develop their thinking without a boundary around it. And a “why this lesson matters” section in the introduction helps a student see the value of what they are about to learn before they start.
Brett connects this to a bigger idea: children who have everything done for them can end up unprepared for adult life. He shares the memory of a friend whose parents did everything for him, and who struggled with the basics of running a household when he finally moved out.
“Anything that your child can do, you should probably get them to try it and do it and practice it.”
— Brett Campbell
His caution to parents is that giving a child everything, without any ownership attached, can quietly build entitlement. The more useful question is not what you can give them, but whether they understand and are prepared for the real world.
The third skill is one Brett describes under the umbrella of emotional intelligence: helping a child first understand how they feel, and then learn to regulate it.
Ellen points to the practical tools inside the Euka program. Every lesson ends with a reflection section where the student picks an icon for how they felt, happy, frustrated, bored, and that small habit helps them notice patterns and act on them.
“It’s about getting them to think of themselves as learners and reflect on their learning experience and improve it, because that’s the kind of thing they’ll take on into the workforce.”
— Ellen Brown
There is also an upload space after practical activities, so a student can look back on a diorama or poster they built and feel genuine pride in it, plus achievement certificates each term. The slower pace of homeschooling, Ellen notes, is what gives families the time to reflect together in the first place.
Brett’s at-home version is a nightly gratitude check-in with his daughter. The key, he says, is to lead by sharing your own first rather than forcing gratitude, because that models the behaviour instead of demanding it.
The fourth skill is about the experiences that time makes room for. For Ellen, this was one of the biggest draws of homeschooling, and her family did Meals on Wheels together when her children were little.
“What the kids got out of that was seeing where people live, how much just spending a few minutes talking to somebody can mean to someone.”
— Ellen Brown
She contrasts the packed after-school schedule of soccer, dance, homework and bed with the breathing room homeschooling can offer, room for volunteering, work experience, or a child simply pulling things apart to see how they work.
Brett’s thread is that real-world experiences quickly show a child where their real interests and abilities lie. He wanted to be a professional athlete growing up, but experiencing it taught him the gap between natural ability and the work required to break through.
“Putting yourself in real world experiences quickly shines a spotlight on where your areas of opportunity lie.”
— Brett Campbell
His encouragement to parents is to pay close attention to what their children are drawn to, even a video game, and ask why they love it, because there are usually clues in it worth pulling a thread on.
The fifth skill builds on the first two. Brett describes how, as children grow into independent and critical thinkers, they start to question a single source of information rather than accepting it at face value.
His practical tool is teaching children to look at the “steel man” of the opposing view, so they learn there is usually more than one side, and that beliefs can and should change when new evidence appears.
“Being able to be fluid and not rigid and dogmatic on your thinking is a very, very important skill to bring into the big wide world.”
— Brett Campbell
Ellen’s example is meeting her first homeschooled teenager, who had a strong sense of self and an awareness of local issues that surprised her. She sees homeschooling as an opportunity to live in the real world rather than being cocooned from it, so young people grow up engaged with what is going on around them.
The sixth skill is responsibility, and Ellen’s view is that children often love the ownership it gives them. Her kids have done their own washing since they could press a button, and by their teenage years that responsibility was simply part of who they were.
“If the worst thing is you can’t find some clean knickers, then you’ve learned that lesson the hard way and you’ll work that one out.”
— Ellen Brown
That same principle extends into managing their own weekly timetable when homeschooling, and reflecting on what did and did not get done.
Brett’s practical trick for younger children is “this or that”: offering two choices rather than an instruction, so the child feels ownership over the decision.
“She’s not being told what to do. She’s now making the choice herself, which feels like she’s got this ownership over it and it’s her decision.”
— Brett Campbell
Real questions Australian parents ask about preparing their children for life beyond the curriculum.
Brett and Ellen focus on six: financial literacy and entrepreneurship, independent thinking, self-awareness and reflection, real-world experiences, connecting learning to the world around them, and responsibility and self-management. Their argument is that these skills, more than facts and figures, are what prepare a child to think and adapt in a fast-changing world.
In Grade 7 and 8, students take business studies and start their own small business, looking at a different part of running it each week. This builds into a Grade 9 and 10 financial literacy program covering practical money knowledge like budgets, tax, and what happens when you buy a car.
Brett’s suggestion is to let them scan a few items at the shops so they learn how money and barcodes work, and where things come from. He also gives his daughter a small daily reward tied to completed lessons, so she learns the value of earning something rather than being given everything.
“When you pay, you pay attention.”
— Brett Campbell
Lessons are written directly to the student, even before they can read, so the child feels ownership over their learning. Plenty of hands-on activities and a “why this lesson matters” section help children see the relevance of what they are learning before they start.
Every Euka lesson ends with a reflection section where the student picks how they felt, which helps them notice patterns over time. At home, Brett suggests a nightly gratitude check-in, and leading by sharing your own gratitude first rather than forcing it.
The slower pace of homeschooling gives families time for volunteering, work experience, and following a child’s curiosity, experiences that a packed after-school schedule can crowd out. Both hosts see these experiences as one of the fastest ways for a child to discover where their real interests and strengths lie.
Preparing a child for the real world is not mainly about how much they can memorise. In a world changing as quickly as this one, the skills that matter are how a child thinks, reflects, and takes responsibility, and those are exactly the skills a curriculum alone rarely has time to build.
Homeschooling gives families the time and space to build them deliberately, from financial literacy and independent thinking through to real-world experience and self-management. And most of it starts with small, everyday moments any parent can create.
Choosing to homeschool for your senior year is a genuinely viable option with Euka Future Learning. The assessed university pathway can guarantee you entry into over 100 universities across 18 countries without the requirement of an ATAR. For those students not seeking to go to Uni, our assessment-free path can be a breath of fresh air. Students still receive their Grade 12 certificate, but have the freedom and stress-free environment to learn in.
Brett, Ellen and the team will give it a listen. Keep an ear out — we'll let you know if your message features in an upcoming episode.
Euka runs a full Grade 11 and 12 program with two streams: assessed (upload assessments, get teacher feedback, resubmit to lift your mark) and assessment-free (same subjects and assessments, self-directed, just no ATAR exams).
English is the only mandatory subject; students choose five more from around 20 options, and external exams like piano or ballet can earn credit towards a subject.
Subjects are one-year courses, so a student can change a subject a few weeks in, or start fresh with new subjects in Grade 12, which mainstream school rarely allows.
You can switch mid-year, including in Term 3 of Grade 12. Euka does not carry over school marks, but the student’s knowledge comes with them, and they can still finish the year with a full academic transcript.
Euka does not run exams, which removes the ATAR and HSC pressure at the exact point in the year it usually peaks.
Euka’s university pathway is recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries, with no ATAR required for entry.
Senior students complete a diploma in their first year at the university’s college, which guarantees entry into second year of the degree and stands on its own if they choose not to continue.
Grade 12 runs across three terms, leaving a flexible fourth term for work experience, volunteering, or exploring a passion before the next step.
The fear that holds most senior families back is timing. If Grade 12 has been hard, there is a strong pull to just finish the year, then make decisions off results that came from a difficult stretch.
Ellen sees the pattern often. A student has been unwell, or a family situation has knocked Grade 12 off course, and by Term 3 the stakes and the pressure are both climbing. The student starts to withdraw, and the parent is left asking how to help.
Switching mid-year breaks that bind. Students can start with Euka in Term 3, bring their existing knowledge with them, and still complete enough assessments and feedback to finish the year with a full academic transcript.
“Whatever they’ve done in Term 1 and 2 at school can be brought forward in that they’ve got their knowledge. We don’t take their marks.”
— Ellen Brown, co-founder and Head of Education, Euka
The result is that a student who has had a rough first half of the year still gets the same opportunity at the end of it as if Grade 12 at school had gone well.
Euka offers a full senior curriculum with two streams. The assessed stream is the one most students choose: they complete the same subjects and assessments, upload their work, and get feedback from the teaching team. The assessment-free stream covers the same content as a self-directed journey, finishing with a completion certificate rather than an academic transcript.
Most families pick the assessed stream for the feedback, not because university is the goal. At school, feedback can feel like a verdict, a mark out of 100 with a list of what went wrong. At Euka, feedback is part of the learning. A student uploads an assessment, gets a mark alongside their strengths and the areas to improve, and can redo and resubmit the work to lift the result.
“A student’s final results are up to the student, not up to what they know on a particular day.”
— Ellen Brown
English is the only mandatory subject. Students then choose five more from around 20 options, and Euka can credit external exams like piano or ballet. Because the subjects are one-year courses, a student who finds a subject is not the right fit a few weeks in can change it, and a student who did not enjoy their Grade 11 subjects can start fresh in Grade 12.
There is a common assumption that without an ATAR or HSC, competitive university courses are closed. Ellen is emphatic that the opposite is true.
Euka has a partnership recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries, as well as every state around Australia. The university colleges have had their academic teams review Euka’s program and recognise it as equivalent to Grade 12, so students who meet the benchmark, around 70 per cent in the relevant subjects, have guaranteed entry.
Here is how it works. In the first year, the student completes a diploma at the university’s college, sitting in the same lecture rooms but with smaller tutorial groups and extra academic support. Finishing the diploma guarantees a place in the second year of the degree. If they decide partway not to continue, they still hold a diploma, which sits higher than a Grade 12 certificate or a Cert III or IV.
“You’re not picking a degree when you’re going on this Euka pathway, you’re actually picking a route.”
— Ellen Brown
Because the major is chosen at the end of first year, students do not have to lock in a decision before they even start. Ellen contrasts this with a student who goes straight from Grade 12 into first-year university, picks the wrong major, and leaves with nothing but a debt. Euka also handles the university applications, so families are not left navigating that part alone.
Grade 11 runs across four terms, building the foundation for the senior years. Grade 12 is structured over three terms, with assessments uploaded when the student is ready rather than against fixed due dates. That leaves a flexible fourth term, and Brett argues the breathing room it creates is one of the most underrated parts of the senior program.
That space can go into work experience, a passion project, or volunteering. A student curious about a trade can spend a month in a workshop and learn quickly whether it fits. A student drawn to photography can chase that interest far enough to know if it is a path worth pursuing.
Ellen points out a practical detail that often stops parents: work-experience insurance. It is simple to arrange, covers a three-month period, and costs less than $100, enough for a full term of trying something out.
“There isn’t a door that has not opened for my own children when they just simply sent off an email saying, this is what I’m interested in doing.”
— Ellen Brown
Brett’s own thread through this is work ethic. It is not a subject you study, it is a behaviour you build, and he argues it is the single attribute he and other business owners look for most when hiring. His encouragement to senior students is direct: put your hand up, offer to help, and be willing to start on the broom before you build the house.
Yes. Senior students can switch to Euka mid-year, including in Term 3 of Grade 12. Euka does not carry over school marks, but the student keeps their knowledge and completes enough assessments and feedback to finish the year with a full academic transcript.
Yes. Euka has guaranteed-entry arrangements recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries. The university colleges recognise Euka’s program as equivalent to Grade 12, so students who reach the benchmark, around 70 per cent in the relevant subjects, are guaranteed entry. No ATAR is required.
Yes. Assessed-stream students receive an academic transcript with their grades. Non-assessed students receive a completion certificate confirming they have finished Grade 11 and 12.
No. Euka does not run high-stakes exams. Assessments are uploaded for feedback and can be resubmitted. Removing exams is one of the ways Euka takes the ATAR and HSC pressure off senior students.
Yes. In homeschooling the senior subjects are one-year courses, not the two-year lock-in of mainstream school, so a student can start fresh with different subjects in Grade 12 if Grade 11 was not the right fit.
A hard Grade 11 or 12 at school does not have to define what comes next. Senior students can switch mid-year, keep their progress, and finish with a full transcript, without the exam pressure that usually peaks in Term 3.
The university door is wider than most families think. With guaranteed-entry pathways recognised by over 100 universities across 18 countries, and no ATAR required, a homeschooled senior student keeps every option open, and gains a diploma in the first year either way.
Choosing to homeschool for your senior year is a genuinely viable option with Euka Future Learning. The assessed university pathway can guarantee you entry into over 100 universities across 18 countries without the requirement of an ATAR. For those students not seeking to go to Uni, our assessment-free path can be a breath of fresh air. Students still receive their Grade 12 certificate, but have the freedom and stress-free environment to learn in.
Brett, Ellen and the team will give it a listen. Keep an ear out — we'll let you know if your message features in an upcoming episode.
These numbers can feel heavy. The point isn’t to alarm you. It’s that if this is your family, you are far from alone.
Australians make around 6.1 million searches a month for anxiety and mental health (across the whole population, not only children).
The proportion of full-time students in Grades 1-10 attending at least 90% of the time fell from 77.8% in 2015 to 59.8% in 2024, roughly a 30% drop in regular attendance.
Overall attendance dropped from 92.6% in 2015 to 88.6% over the same period.
One self-reported survey (the Monash Australian Youth Barometer) asked whether young Australians had felt anxiety or depression even once in the past year, and 98% said yes. Because the bar was “at least once”, that headline tells us less than it first seems. As Brett notes, it’s a number to read carefully, not to panic over.
For children with a school-based trigger, the first term tends to simmer; by the second term, friendships and pressures “step up” and the trigger takes hold.
Academic struggle that was manageable in term one compounds once the school year hits its stride.
For children in the second group, a long build-up reaches a threshold, they can no longer “mask” what has been going on underneath, and it surfaces mid-year.
Your child has an ongoing, disproportionate emotional response to going to school, not just the occasional off day.
Mornings have become a battle, or your child is withdrawing from things they used to enjoy.
You are trying to work out whether what you are seeing is stress, anxiety, or something that needs clinical support.
You are weighing whether to remove your child from a school environment that isn’t working.
The word “refusal” does a lot of damage. It makes it sound like a choice, the way you might refuse a second helping of dessert. As Ellen explains, that framing is wrong.
“A lot of psychologists have called it school can’t rather than refusal. It’s not a choice the child’s making. It’s an emotional response the child’s having. And so it’s really important that we understand this is not just a child who’s being defiant.”
Ellen Brown
School refusal is not truancy, and it is not the occasional tummy ache or the rough morning after the holidays. It is something more persistent:
“School refusal is where there’s an ongoing emotional response that is disruptive in a way that makes it really difficult to get the child to school. And it’s ongoing. That’s the important thing.”
Ellen Brown
Every child wakes up some days not wanting to go. What sets school refusal apart is a disproportionate emotional response, sustained over a period of time, a couple of weeks or more.
One of the most useful parts of the conversation is the distinction between stress and anxiety, because parents, understandably, can leap to the most worrying explanation.
Stress is a response to a real, present pressure. There is a clear cause: a test tomorrow, a fight with a friend, something unkind that was said. When the pressure passes, the stress fades.
In small doses it is normal, even useful.
Anxiety is the worry that stays after the trigger is gone, or that shows up when there is no trigger at all. It is anticipatory, a fear about what might happen.
It doesn’t switch off when the situation resolves, and it can build on itself. When it becomes persistent and starts interfering with daily life, it tips from an emotion into a disorder.
Brett’s clean way to hold the difference:
“Stress says, ‘I have too much to do.’ Anxiety says, ‘Something bad is going to happen and I can’t stop thinking about it.'”
Brett Campbell
School refusal isn’t one problem. Ellen describes two distinct groups, and the distinction matters because the path forward is different for each.
A trigger at school. Bullying, a clash with a particular teacher, social anxiety, or academic struggle. Here the issue is environmental, something in the school is causing the response. Often it simmers in first term and takes hold in second term.
Anxiety that isn’t tied to school. It may start with “I don’t want to go to school”, but the same response then shows up at the weekend, at sport, or elsewhere. This is the group where clinical support may be needed, and where a long build-up has reached a threshold the child can no longer mask.
Working out which group your child is in, by trying to identify whether there is a clear trigger, is the first practical step.
Perhaps the most important reframe in the episode is about the goal itself. Most advice treats success as getting the child back to school as fast as possible. Ellen pushes back hard on that:
“If there’s an environmental problem, the child’s not the problem, it’s the environment that’s not working for that child, then success is removing them from that environment and giving them an environment where they can flourish.”
Ellen Brown
Sometimes success is not going to school for a while. Removing a child from an environment that isn’t working for them is not running away. It’s giving them the space to rebuild, and to build the tools they will need next time something hard comes along. As Brett puts it, even six weeks spent helping a child rebuild is not six weeks lost.
This is where Euka fits for many families. Around 30% of families come to Euka looking for support with the intention of moving back into the schooling system, and that is entirely welcome. The goal is whatever is best for that child and family.
Euka’s new Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling course covers exactly this, with modules on what removing a child looks like, the first week, the first 30 days, and the path forward.
If you are in the middle of the year and worried about your child, the hosts suggest starting here:
Work out the root cause. You don’t have to solve it, just identify it. Is it academic stress, a bullying situation, a clash with a teacher, or something that moves beyond school?
Don’t rush to treat a predictable problem as a medical one. If the distress is predictable (every Sunday night, after holidays), start with small, practical strategies before reaching for medical or professional help.
Partner with the school if it’s a good one. Part-days, a couple of hours in the morning, or specific days are common, workable arrangements.
Use a program like Euka alongside school. A child easing back in for an hour or two a day can keep learning at home, many find they’re not just keeping up but getting ahead, which becomes one less thing feeding the anxiety. And you don’t need to be enrolled as a homeschooler to access the Euka program.
Reframe success around your child, not the system.
You are not overreacting. The child is telling you, in their own way, that something feels stressful. But a predictable, Sunday-night pattern points more towards stress about going to school than towards an anxiety disorder, and it may settle on its own over a week or two.
Start small: talk to the teacher, look for a way to make Monday mornings gentler (going in a little earlier to help in the classroom, putting something special in their lunch). If the distress is only on Sunday and Monday and they are otherwise fine through the week, that is reassuring. Put strategies in place before raising big alarm bells.
A child not wanting to go is normal and occasional. School refusal is an ongoing, disproportionate emotional response, sustained over a couple of weeks or more, that makes getting to school genuinely difficult. It is not truancy, and it is not a single rough morning.
Home education is a recognised, legal choice in every Australian state and territory, there is a registration process, and Euka can walk you through it. When the problem is environmental, bullying, a teacher clash, a school setting that isn’t working, withdrawing a child is a legitimate response. And it doesn’t have to be forever: success isn’t always the fastest route back to a classroom; sometimes it is time out to rebuild, with the option to return later. In fact, around 30% of Euka families come planning to head back into the school system. The right answer depends on your child and your family.
Yes. A program like Euka can run alongside a gradual return to school, or carry the learning entirely if your child needs time away. You do not need to be enrolled as a homeschooler to access the Euka program, and Euka can support everything from registration through to reporting.
Have a question for Brett and Ellen? Share it on the show, your question could feature in a future episode.
School refusal is rising, and the data backs up what many parents are feeling. But the most useful shift this episode offers isn’t a statistic, it’s a change in how to think about the problem:
Name it accurately. “School can’t” is closer to the truth than “refusal”. It is an emotional response, not defiance.
Separate stress from anxiety. Not every hard morning is a disorder, and not every disorder looks dramatic at first.
Redefine success. If the environment is the problem, removing your child from it is not failure, it is the start of the rebuild.
There is no prize for pushing through alone. Ask for help, lean on the people around you, and know that your family’s path doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.
“Your job was never to get your child to fit the system. Your job’s to get your child to feel safe enough to be able to grow.”
Brett Campbell
If you are even considering time away from school, Euka can help, from registration to reporting, so you can take that off your plate and focus on your child. For a deeper walk through making the move mid-year, listen to the previous episode on starting homeschooling in the middle of the school year.
