It's not too late to make home education choices this year! Each year, parents have the responsibility to notify the Minister of Education of their intent to home educate their child. Families have until September 29th to finalize their decision and qualify for funding, after which you can still become a home educator but will no longer qualify for funding in this academic year.  (Note the date change from the 30th due to the new federal holiday.)

You will need to decide if you will notify that you are going to home educate in a supervised or unsupervised manner. Here are the Cole's notes on the forms you need to know about, but more information follows, so don't feel overwhelmed by the language or the process… keep reading and learning. Home education is big on parents learning as you go, just like we want our kids to!

Supervised means that you need to notify with a willing associate board or associate private (independent) school and be accepted by them. Don't leave this to the last week as they have limited space. You notify a supervising authority of your intent to home educate your child through the Home Education Notification Form – Supervised by School Authority.

You will have access to your portion of the home education grant, which is exactly $850 and claimed by submitting receipts to your supervising authority for reimbursement. The other half of the grant pays for one of their teachers to visit you twice a year to assess the learning progress of your child. You need to submit an education plan to be reviewed and approved by them, but they can assist in this.

Unsupervised means that you only need to notify the government that you will be home educating. We may refer to this as Notification Only, No Funding (NONF). There is no requirement to submit an education plan, no visits and no funding. We recommend that you still lay out a plan as recordkeeping is a protection for you in case of a need to make a change or if an inquiry arises during the year. There are two available ways to notify the government. Filling out and sending in the Home Education Notification Form – Not Supervised by School Authority or through an online form in the Provincial Approach to Student Information (PASI) accessible in myPass.

AHEA provides a ton of information on our website to help you have a full picture of what you need to understand and do. Get our ABC's booklets to get a fuller grasp of how home education works in Alberta and the work that AHEA does for you all year. Look at the Glossary of Terms that we've started to help you learn some of the home education language you are bound to come across. Let us know if you have a term you'd like defined!

We have a listing of the Associate Boards/Private (Independent) Schools, along with a helpful list of questions for you to consider when interviewing them. There is also a great list of Curriculum Providers to help you with your resource selection. Look at a sample Education Plan, noting that there are many different styles and you can ask around for other samples to look at.

Support AHEA's work as an independent voice for home education families by making a financial contribution or considering advertising with us. Stay in touch with current work and events by subscribing to our Political Update blog or our bi-monthly newsletter, the Arrow. Keep your eyes and ears open about a local presentation of AHEA's annual Fall Talks around Alberta, coming soon. Hope to see you out there!

Where do you have to physically be on the fast approaching Count Date of September 30^th?

Home educators in Alberta have long made adjustments to their plans to accommodate an almost problematic rule which demanded they be in province. When AB Education updated the Funding Manual last week they addressed this issue, which AHEA had been advocating that they review and modify. Clarifying the physical location a home education family on the Count Day of September 30^th, we are very pleased to advise that the manual now states on page 61,

"4. Home education / Shared Responsibility students and their parents who ordinarily reside in Alberta on the September count date of the current school year."

This is a wonderful change from what it previously stated, "Home Education / Shared Responsibility students and their parents must reside in Alberta on the September count date of the current school year."

We hope you all enjoy this additional freedom to make plans that do NOT have to center around Count Day because you count every day!

                                                                          AHEA - Working Hard For You!

The parents of AHEA have always valued being able to home educate with as little government intervention as possible. This view represented the most freedom possible to home education families while we fall under the purview of the Ministry of Education. This fall, that dream is becoming a reality and is an exciting addition to the choices that we already have had. AHEA is proud to have successfully advocated for the Notification Only, No Funding (NONF) option for the home educators in Alberta.

"We have been championing this sort of option for a number of years and are thankful to see it included in the updated Home Education Regulation that is to take effect on September 1, 2020. I hope that many parents choose this option and I pray that all parents and children who go this route are blessed in the years to come in this freedom-leaning choice."

Ted Tederoff - President, AHEA

NONF will differ from the supervised format you will have experienced under an associate board, which was the only choice until now if you wanted to home educate. Associate boards required you to do four things on behalf of the government:

1. Notify through them, at which time your children are entered into the PASI system. (This allows them to receive the grant of $1700, which you split 50/50.)
2. Submit a copy of your education plan, which informs the validity of your spending and evaluations.
3. Provide proof of purchase by way of submitting receipts that tie into your education plan and the funding guidelines.
4. Give documentation about your child's work/assessments to associate board teachers, also known as your facilitators.

We have all grown used to the oversight and the relationship. For families who feel confident in their ability to educate without the government representative support in funding and manpower, you will now be able to choose to proceed to educate without supervision.

NONF is going to be as simple as it sounds – one step. You will fill out a form to notify the government of your intention to home educate in the new unsupervised format. You will provide typical information that is always required – name, date of birth, address and proof of identity. Since you will be taking responsibility for the education of your child that is not supervised by anyone else you will declare many of the same things that you have followed under an associate board. You will be agreeing that you're providing an education that falls under the Home Education Regulations (the Alberta Program of Studies OR the Schedule of Learning Outcomes), evaluating progress, understand you will not be receiving funding and are still under the oversight of Alberta Education if there are concerns.

Don't forget that although this option is only coming online on September 1^st, you have until September 30^th to have your notification submitted. Be aware that the associate boards are very busy and may reach capacity, so it will be a courtesy to them if you let them know you have decided to move to the Notification Only, No Funding option as early as possible. The Department of Education is currently working to streamline the notification process. An online option that moves your notification to either to the department or to an associate board is hoping to be up by September first, where you can upload your necessary documents along with the form. In the meantime, a .pdf will be available shortly that allows you to print, sign, sending everything to the necessary party.

UPDATE: This is the UNSUPERVISED form.  This is the updated SUPERVISED form.

Checks and Balances Are to be Expected

All educational models have checks and balances built into them. Things like truancy are easily understood and widely known in the public system, but are not relevant to home educators. In setting up this new option, the department needed to build in checks and balances. So far there has not been anything that causes us to be concerned. Any reports that there is a home educator having a problem will first be considered for validity, as there is not going to be an automatic triggering of any kind of inquiry. The Director who already oversees all the education models will include our new option in his portfolio. The criteria for an investigation would be if your home education program did not fall in line with the Home Education Regulations or if you were not providing your children with the opportunity to learn.

The department is working on a process to handle concerns that come in, and AHEA has been gratified to be consulted by the Minister on such a sensitive issue. We reached out to the HSLDA in the USA and Canada about our proposal and have been pleased that in other places the notification only programs have worked well and instances of this type of a concern process being needed are rare as parents meet the criteria. We are pleased that in Alberta we fall under the Education Department instead of Social Services, unlike Ontario, which means we don't have a social worker to deal with, and can instead remaining focused on educational issues. We have suggested in our proposal that in the cases where an assessment may be required that someone who has experience with home education be brought in so that a family will be best understood. As things are decided and become policy, and further information becomes available, we will let you know. AHEA is trusting that home educators will have the best interests of their child at heart, and that everyone is well educated in the requirements laid out. We should also all remember that the exception does not make the rule, and no education model has perfect results, so home education will not be held to an impossible standard that has not been achieved elsewhere.

AHEA has advocated strongly for NONF over the last year and a half. We have been blessed to have a Minister that believes in parents and in their ability to make choices in the best interests of their children. Minister LaGrange presented this position in the Choice in Education Act that received royal assent on June 26, 2020, and this option was made possible by the changes that it produced in the current Education Act This has been followed by the changes to the Home Education Regulations. Although the amendments have been made available, and have been poured over by many, a final copy of the amended Regulations will not be available until September 1^st from the Queen's Printer.

"It is to the credit of Minister Adriana LaGrange that this is now an option for those dedicated and responsible parents who desire the least intrusion into their children's education process.

"The current AHEA executive is to be congratulated for their continued efforts to see this to completion. It is a notable accomplishment, with practical aspects of education returning to the purview of parents, where it rightfully belongs."

Raymond Strom – HSLDA Canada

AHEA supporters will appreciate that we don't seek additional funding for home educators because we believe that money creates undue influence. We are grateful for the choice that Alberta home educators now have in this area. Parents who don't need to consider if what they are spending on curriculum will be approved experience financial freedom in their decision making. Parents who have funding, but are not looking to receive what the public school student costs taxpayers, exhibit wisdom and reasonability, with an eye to the connected cost of what would be asked of them. Not needing to worry about making changes to their education plan and submitting it for review and approval will be a freeing experience for some, while all home educators are able to pivot and utilize every opportunity and to flex with their child and their learning. We are proud to represent parents who define true diversity in customized education for their child.

AHEA, together with you, continues to work for and safeguard liberty in our country, homes and minds.

"Where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is liberty."

2 Corinthians 3:17b 

I'm probably one of the least likely ones to be writing about this topic, but when my husband said someone was asking if I'd be interested in doing so, I thought that maybe it might be something God would have me do.

Ironically, just when I started writing, the program I was using decided I'd done enough, and shut down on me. Maybe I'm not supposed to be doing it, but at the same time, I didn't want to give up that easily.

I'd first like to give some background as to why I lack confidence as to whether I'm able to give my children what they need. I was home educated myself, but never felt that what I received was very thorough. And, yes, partly that was my own fault, in that I was pretty "scatter-brained", and had a hard time focusing on my lessons…. I'd far rather be outside building a treehouse, or something like that. Nonetheless, beyond getting the basics of reading, writing (could I even do that?), and arithmetic, I always said my science consisted of my dad pointing out the north star and the big dipper; and my "social studies" was lived out in that we traveled all over the place. I knew very little history, and, well, just always felt I was lacking in many ways.

Fast forward 30+ years, I'm now the mother of 11 children, half of whom are adults, and all of whom we've homeschooled from the start. I've believed from the first child on, that God gave me these children, knowing my weaknesses and shortcomings, yet He still chose to give them to me, along with the responsibility to raise and educate them.