Brett (00:00)
Hello and welcome to Future Learners. I am your host, Brett Campbell, Chairman and CEO of Euka Future Learning and I’m joined by my amazing co-host, the founder and Head of Education, Ellen Brown. How are you, Ellen?
Ellen (00:16)
Very well, thanks, Brett.
Brett (00:16)
Almost had a tongue twister there. I did when I, when I was launching into that, think we’re, we’re about 40 or so episodes deep and it’s amazing. Yeah. Every time sometimes I still trip over trip over the doormat, but here we are, but into today’s episode, Ellen today, I want us to speak about a couple of very important topics as it relates purely to homeschooling and the ability to create and generate an amazing outcome.
From homeschooling and that is, I wanna talk about two particular topics. One of them is the registration aspect, right? So what is required, what is registration, what is required for registration for families and what they need to know, et cetera, et cetera. And then also the reporting function as well. Those are two very, very important aspects that relate to homeschooling. And I know firsthand is when we communicate this with families and they get an understanding of each of those variables, it opens up a little bit more of a clearer understanding of what is actually required from a let’s call it legality perspective, but then you know, that ability to have your child complete your homeschooling. So these are two topics, obviously, that you know very well. You’ve, you’ve seen it indoctrinated in when there was no such thing as needing to have a child registered all the way through to now, the government are starting to clamp down on that and you
almost make it a legal requirement where your child has to be registered, et cetera. So I’m gonna ask you a series of questions and put you on the hot mic and we’ll see if we can provide as much context as we possibly can for our families out there listening. So I wanna start with registration. Can you tell us what is registration, first of all? Give us the high level
Ellen (02:11)
Sure. So registration is basically letting the Department of Education know or the homeschooler unit know what you’re going to be doing with your child in the coming year. So it’s the plan that the Department of Education needs in order to be able to say, yes, you’re approved to homeschool. And then you are legally in a situation where nobody’s going to wonder where your child is.
Brett (02:36)
Yep, that makes absolute sense. Cool. And then how does a family, let’s say, I’ll play the family side for a moment. Let’s say I’m considering wanting to homeschool my child. And let’s say in this circumstance, I’m ready to pull them out of school next week. Cause I’m like, you know what? Yep, we gotta do something. We’re gonna start homeschooling next week. What does a parent need to do from
Ellen (03:05)
Yeah, so that’s a really tricky one that you’ve given me because that’s one where you’re saying next week, like in a couple of days, I want to start homeschooling. if we’re talking about the. Yeah, yeah. Okay. It depends on the reason your child needs to homeschool next week. So if your child is having some kind of, you know, serious problem at school and they’re not able to be there and that has reached a crisis point.
Brett (03:11)
Yeah, I I threw you a curveball straight away. I wanted to throw you a tough one.
Ellen (03:33)
there’s always an option for those students, even though it’s not ideal when it comes to registration, it normally takes a couple of months. In that sort of situation where there’s a crisis situation, that’s something that we can always deal with. Certainly, there’s always ways around that. So for example, if it was a mental health situation or it was a physical situation, which is really all-encompassing in many ways. If you’re saying they’re homeschooling next week, it’s usually due to a crisis of some kind. So as long as you’ve got a professional that can give you say, a leave of absence from school for a certain amount of time, which allows you then to get your registration covered. The other option is sometimes you’ll come across a principal of a school who is, you know, a little bit more in tune with what homeschooling means and is willing to support you in that decision. And in that case, they can actually give you an exemption from school to say, yes, you’re still on our books at school.
But we see that you have a plan. Usually, that would be more likely to be the case if a family was coming to Yucca and they could have a very clear education plan to give to their principal. Now, lots of school principals may not be up with what homeschooling offers and may still be thinking about homeschooling from the olden days and not have a good answer. They may not support that exemption.
But like I said, if it is a crisis situation, then you can get a mental health professional or a doctor GP to be able to give you that time, you know, that medical certificate to give you a time off school to get your registration approved. And then you can move straight in. there’s always where there’s a will, there’s a way I say that about everything.
Brett (05:14)
Yeah. So you mentioned that it can take, it can take up to, I certainly did throw your like the hardest, the hardest example there. but it’s for a reason. So you did say though, it can take up to a couple of months. Can you talk to that a little bit further? What do you mean by that? So let’s say I, I’m thinking about, or I’m considering taking my child out in the next few weeks, or even I’m thinking maybe next term might be something, or we’re going to go travel or we’re to do X, Y,
What is the general, I guess, experience that a parent would go through as it relates to registration?
Ellen (05:54)
Yeah, so look, if in an ideal world you have time to plan ahead, I said a couple of months and I said that specifically because if you’re planning to start in January of next year, the beginning of the year, and you decide now to go and get yourself organised and registered, great, no problem. But if you decide in December that you want to start in January, you have to understand that the department will have a whole heap of people deciding at the last minute because lots of kids
have that struggle at the beginning of a new year and the parents are, should we, shouldn’t we, all that kind of thing. So that can be really, really tricky. And that’s when it takes the longest time if you’re trying to register in January or December, January. even, you know, thinking about registering and getting your approval doesn’t actually pull you from the school system. So that’s something to remember too. So for example, if you thought, you know
in November, we’re going to homeschool and this is the plan we’re to have, you can put your application in, it’s not going to affect your schooling situation. So you can put it in nice and early and you can have your approval back before the end of the year and you’re ready to start the next year. So that’s ideal. Life doesn’t always work that way. But ideally, you know, if you could leave at least say two months, it would be fantastic. But like I said, you know, we all understand that often people come from
to homeschooling at the last minute.
Brett (07:18)
So let me double tap on that because there will be circumstances. let’s say, yeah, cause to, a parent to think two months ahead that we’re going to do that now, yeah, that that’s probably 50 % potentially of families who, who are in that boat. The other 50 % is, yeah, it is December and we’re like, you know what, we’re sitting, sitting at Christmas time over a nice barbecue and we’re like, you know what, I think it’s time now that, you know, we bring little, little Bobby out of school and he’s going to go
And then we start the process and we realize that, no, it can take a couple of months. What happens if we still don’t wanna take Bobby back to school and we still are not registered? What happens there?
Ellen (08:03)
That’s when I would I can say that we’ve certainly had parents that have fallen into that situation and then they it’s exactly the same thing where you’re going to approach the school and you’re to say look this is what we want to do will you give us an exemption we’ve already put our Approval is pending we’ve already put our documents in and many schools will be cooperative with that You’ve already put your documents in they know you’ve made that decision sometimes they can try and talk you out of it they
And generally, that’s because they haven’t got a good understanding of what homeschooling is and that your child is getting an excellent education. so, you know, going to the school and say, you know, obviously, emailing the school and say, we won’t be returning this year, we’ve actually got our homeschool registration pending at the moment. That’s one way of doing it. You know, the teacher, the principal may give you an exemption. Otherwise, same thing, there’ll be a reason that your homeschooling go and get a medical certificate that covers you for some time. And
And that’s easy to do these days too, by the way. So it doesn’t have to be a drama. Don’t, I think one of the things that parents need to know is don’t get flustered and frustrated. These are your kids. You know, you’ve got rights and decisions to be able to make. just, you also need to understand the people on the other side have to tick their boxes. So for a school, for example, and this is really important to know at the beginning of the year,
a school has to do like a roll call of how many students they have and that’s how much government funding they get. And so that can cause some real pushback from principals when they’re all of a sudden finding that you’re leaving and they’re trying to get as many numbers as they can. And I’m not being unkind, I just think that’s good to know that that’s where some of that pushback comes from sometimes. But what they do need to do is be accountable for the students that they have in their care, you know.
Brett (09:38)
That’s the truth.
Ellen (09:50)
I don’t like saying in their care because you the children are in your care but on their role they need to be accountable for that and when you leave they have to put something there so you can’t just say sorry we’re not coming back to school see ya because they’re supposed to put something into the department says this child’s this school and it’s going to that school so you know sometimes I think understanding what’s happening on the other side helps you kind of get a bit of a picture
why you might be seeing some pushback and how to help them and the best way to help them is to say we’ve put our documentation in already it’s just pending would you like our learning plans so you can see what we’ll be doing and get them started. I’ve heard of kids that have been told or parents that have been told they have to come back to school for
the two weeks that are left waiting for their approval. They have to buy uniforms, things like that. I think you need to do a bit of pushback yourself and be strong and say, you know what, we’ll go and get some sort of certificate.
Brett (10:42)
Yeah.
Yeah. You’ve said a couple of things there that I just want to make sure our audience knows, cause you’re like lesson plan and we’re going to submit what we’re going to be learning, et cetera. What does a, and I know we talk about this every single day, but what does a parent actually have to have prepared? So it’s not like they just go to a website and click, I want to homeschool my child. And that’s it. Like there’s what, does the process look like? And then we can share what does the process look like for a family?
who let’s say are not utilizing UKA and then we could talk about you know number one how we’ve been able to you know take all the heavy lifting out of that for our families because we realize it’s a big burden on someone’s shoulders. So what is actually required at this current state?
Ellen (11:36)
Sure. So that will depend on the state that you’re in. So I’m going to what I’m going to do is talk generally all states require you to have a learning plan that’s going to cover every subject area for the whole year. So that’s really important. They want that to based on the curriculum. So if you were doing the registration yourself, you’d go to the curriculum, which is online, and you’d say, okay, what topics does my child need to cover this year? And then you would put together, you know, some kind
plan saying in term one we’re going to cover this and you’d copy down the different parts of the curriculum that you’re going to be covering in each subject area. So it’s really important you’re covering the whole curriculum and if you’re in all states except New South Wales you’d be covering the Australian curriculum and the Australian curriculum has had updates so don’t get tricked on this. there’s a version 8
out there but now there’s a version nine so you need to make sure you’ve got the latest curriculum documents that’s important thing to look out for so there’s also an application form that’ll ask things like what are your goals for your child’s education for the year, what’s your child’s learning style and how are you adapting the program for your child so some key things for a parent to think about when they’re moving into homeschooling so they’ll want the plan
They’ll want your application form filled in and often a bit of a timetable around how you’re going to structure your week. Is that all the things? I think they’re the main three things that they
Brett (13:10)
mean, I think 99 % of parents listening to that right now are going, my gosh, I have to do that, right? Because we’ve also got to remember, this is your child’s education, right? And I mean, I’m very biased, but I think the education of our children is one of the most, if not most important things that we can provide as parents, right? Is the ability for our child to become educated and so forth. So to the parents who are sitting there going,
It sounds like I need to be, how am going to map this and justify that we’ve met this limit of, know, have we created a plan that shows we’re going to do enough geography here or enough science here or enough math here, et cetera? how, the, let me say the government, like when they’re receiving these plans, how strict are they on it?
What are the probabilities of families getting declined when it comes to registration? So like how strict are they around this?
Ellen (14:17)
Sure. Yeah, actually, you made a good point. was something else that I knew there was something else I forgot when I was talking through what you need. You said, how am I going to know that my child’s covered the work? And that is another part that that you need to put in in that beginning registration part. They want to say, how are you going to assess it? There’s no point saying I’m going to teach something if you can’t see whether your child’s learned it or not. So they want to see an assessment plan as well as your plan for your teaching. So that was the other thing I forgot.
So how strict are they? They’re actually very strict. things have changed a lot over the years. And I’m an optimist, you see, Brett. And so always try to look on these things and go, my goodness, they want all these things. But I really do try to look at this and go, okay, like you said, this is my child’s education. I as a parent, I want to know what we’re learning for the
I want to know whether they’ve learned it or not for the year. And so if you can put it that way and go, okay, yes, it’s hard work, but this is something that I’m going to need. It just takes the sting out a little bit. You know, if you’re to go along feeling like somebody’s, you know, making you do a lot of work for nothing, it doesn’t feel good. But yes, it isn’t unusual for people to be declined if they
put all of those sections into their application. So if you don’t have your assessment part, how are you going to assess it? If you don’t have a learning plan that covers every subject area, if you don’t know about how you’re going to adjust that program for your child’s own learning style or how you’re going to cover, you will get declined. So you do need to make sure that you’ve got all of those parts in
Brett (15:57)
Yeah, and as we mentioned at the very start here, this is why we really want to discuss this topic because it is extremely important, especially for many families. Making the decision to homeschool is probably one of the biggest they’ve made to date in their child’s development, right, and in their journey for some. the barrier
is essentially in front of you as it relates to that is it’s almost feels like you have to have a teaching degree to try and figure out how do I even put something forward to show and then prove that we are going to be able to tick all the boxes required. So one thing that I will share and this is where again, why you can exists right outside of the ability for us to provide the entire curriculum from K through 12 that is fully mapped and fully aligned
yeah, with the current Australian curriculum is we take all of that heavy lifting out as well. And we do have a premium service, which is an extremely affordable service that essentially takes all the heavy lifting out of the registration process, which, you know, and I’ll say it, the click of a couple of buttons and you have to fill out some information, et cetera. we provide the entire scope of sequence. We provide everything that you then just need to go and hand over.
to the Department of Education. And to date, we’ve got 100 % success rate of every family that utilizes our registration service so that they can continue on their learning. So is there anything else, Ellen, as it relates to registration itself that you think would be very important to know for a family? I’ve got a couple of tail -long questions after that, though.
Ellen (17:49)
I forgot to mention when I said, you know, all states except New South Wales will do that to the Australian curriculum. I forgot to mention, if you’re in New South Wales, you’re still homeschooling, it’s still very possible, you just have to use the New South Wales curriculum. So that’s something that we do here at UKO is we make sure that we align what we’re doing with the Australian curriculum and for those students in New South Wales also to the New South Wales curriculum. So that’s just an important thing that I forgot to mention.
Brett (18:15)
Yeah, and if someone did want to go and register themselves, where would they go to try and figure out this?
Ellen (18:17)
Perhaps if you jump into some questions.
Yes. So if you’re going to register yourself, if you go to your state homeschooling, so you know, New South Wales homeschooling, if you jump online to their, they’ll, they’ll have information there about, you know, how to do your application. They might have some examples and things like that as well for you to have a look at. So it’s definitely possible to do it. I certainly over all of these years, you know, I’ve, I’ve had to do that registration process and seen, you know, but the other thing is you need to keep up to date.
If you’re doing it yourself, keep up to date with changes to the curriculum. So that’s another thing. So for example, New South Wales has just announced that they’re actually changing their curriculum and that’s going to be coming up. And so I know the UKE teachers this end are always, you know, watching what’s going on in their curriculum to make sure that when they do hand those documents in that they actually are the right version. That’s important.
Brett (19:17)
And how long does registration last for?
Ellen (19:23)
It lasts for 12 months. So that in some states like Queensland, even though you’ve got 12 months of registration, and we’ll come to this I know, after 10 months, you’ll be called upon to do your reporting. So you haven’t finished your whole 12 months yet. They’ll be doing some reporting and in other states like in New South Wales and WA.
Brett (19:24)
for months.
Ellen (19:44)
In the first couple of months, you’ll actually have the opportunity to have a chat with somebody from the homeschooling unit who’ll just check up and see how you’re going and make sure that you’re on track and answer any questions you’ve got to. But 12 months.
Brett (19:54)
Yeah, absolutely. 12 months, absolutely, great. Okay, so there you have it. If you are investigating homeschooling, obviously, if you select UCA as your provider, we take out all that heavy lifting for you, but it’s still also very important for you to know how it works and what your responsibilities as a homeschooling parent and family actually are.
The follow on from that, Alan, is the next topic of reporting. So there’s the government registration, and then there’s the government reporting. So let’s start at a high level of what is the government reporting? What is
Ahem.
Ellen (20:37)
So the government reporting is basically just the ability for a parent to be able to show that their child has actually met the requirements of the curriculum over the year.
you know, in some places it may be that you have to provide a portfolio in, you know, I think that’s kind of changed. I was going to say a hard copy and you send it in. And other times it might be because you get a visit from a moderator or an authorised person in WA and New South Wales where they want to look through your child’s work. But basically, no matter what state you’re in, it’s the pieces of work that you can collect together that will demonstrate your child’s mastery of the learning that you’ve put in your plan.
Brett (21:17)
Okay. And how do we know again, I’ll let the cat out the bag. We obviously here at Yuka have a government registration, a government reporting service as well, where again, we take the heavy lifting out of this for you as a family. But if you’re not utilizing Yuka and you’re exploring homeschooling, you know, by yourself, how does one know how much to report on and, and how much information should I send to the, to the department? Do I just
every piece of work that I just throw it in a box and at the end of the year, send it on fast track to the department’s doorstep. What do I do? What’s that sort of look
Ellen (21:58)
That’s actually what it used to look like. I’ve got to laugh when I think back to homeschooling in the olden days and these poor authorised person had turned up and you’d just lift the box of things onto the table and they’d have to try and, anyway, it’s not like that anymore. They want to see that you’re organised. They want to see that you’ve thought through. And that’s why part of that registration part is to actually already say, how are you going to assess your child’s work? And each state’s slightly different and it changes about what they want to see.
And because of that, what we do is we say, what’s the ultimate report look like? And then no matter what state families are in, we know that that’s going to be more than adequate. So that’s how we approach reporting. And so even if you’re not using UKIS reporting system, you can do that at home. And the way you do that is make sure that you’ve got a few work samples from each subject area across the year. And then you might keep those in a fold or something like that. Now, it’s not just the work samples, no point just handing them a piece
paper with the states of Australia written on it, they want to see what parts of the curriculum is that work sample actually attached to. So you’ll need to go back to the curriculum again and have a look on the curriculum. Say there’s a topic and then underneath the topic there’ll be little pointers and they’re the little pointers that your work samples are going to match. one of the pointers might be your child knows the states of Australia and they can label them. That might be one of the pointers.
So you would have another piece of paper plus your work sample and you would write down which parts of the curriculum that work sample is addressing. And you would also write down your observation. Did your child struggle with it? Did they need to do it more than once? Is it something you’re still working on? The department doesn’t expect you to send in.
perfect pieces of work that you’ve had to dock and edit to make them look perfect. If your child hasn’t actually grasped something yet, that’s not a problem at all. Just because you said my child’s going to learn to do this this year and they haven’t actually mastered it yet, that’s not a problem. They want to see that you understand that your child’s moving in the right direction or what you’re doing to address whatever it is that your child hasn’t yet achieved. So being honest with some observations.
with those work samples is important as well. Just make sure that they’re spread across the different subject areas and that you’ve put some observations and curriculum connections.
Brett (24:20)
Yeah, and to finish that point off is if you do utilize Yuka, which again, the families who utilize us certainly take up the government report creating, is essentially inside the LMS, we’ve got an area that you’ll go log into and you’ll be able to upload the work samples directly there. They’ll be able to sit there. At the very end of the year, you can hit a button that says compile. It’ll compile all of the work samples that you’ve uploaded throughout the years you’ve been going through the lessons.
along with a series of questions that need to be answered. That again, sort of tie off what Alan was talking about there is we’re not just sending A4 pieces of paper of something over to someone just to look at and go, that looks amazing. It really has this curriculum being met. So that is something that again, we certainly have it as a very affordable addition to the curriculum that we have here over at UCA as well.
questions to tie report creator off, it’s pretty straightforward in its nature. have to, you your child does work. You then report on it to the government, right? To the department. So what happens, can a child fail? Like, if at the end of the year, someone sent their work into the department, can the child fail the reporting? How does that work?
Ellen (25:45)
Yeah, yeah. So it wouldn’t be that the child’s failed, I would say it would have to be the parents failed. And it would not be that they’ve failed, it would just be that they haven’t, they’ve failed to produce the evidence that’s required to show their child’s learnt the curriculum that’s that you’ve put in at the beginning of the plan. So yes, you can you can certainly be declined. And in that case, what usually happens is you get a letter where it’s like
a notice to complete your homeschooling registration will be pulled back. Now, they give you time. So if you do find that you have tried to do your reporting and it hasn’t worked out well and you’ve got, they will always make sure they give you bit of time to fix the problem so that you’re not left in the, they just go, too bad you’re out. They will say, okay, you’ve got a month and this is what we require to see. And you just need to go back through and go, okay, where can I improve what I sent in the first time?
Brett (26:39)
So does a parent have to do every activity in the Yuka platform and upload every activity as a work sample?
Ellen (26:48)
No, no, no, definitely not. So we have pieces of work that we’ve specifically chosen. Now we’ve chosen more than you need. We’ve chosen say four for maths, four for English and two in each other subject, which is more than you need because sometimes life happens and your child doesn’t want to make a volcano or it’s just something that you think, we’re too busy. We don’t want to do that. know, so you don’t have to do all of them. But if you do a couple from each subject, each term,
Right across the year you’ve got more than enough. And I think one of the things that I really love about what we’ve done with reporting, I think, you know, it’s come about from that personal experience of having to go through reporting myself, is that when you upload something and it asks you about your observations, it will automatically take that piece of work and align it to the curriculum for you so that when your report comes out,
all those curriculum points, shows what your child’s covered and your observations are there, which are obviously unique to you yourself. But you’ve got those keys in there, you could plan that or say here is a work sample, you can upload it. Now, if your child hasn’t done the work samples because they’ve been unwell and they didn’t like the activity,
It’s not their type of thing. There might be another activity that your child’s done in that subject area that you want to upload and by all means you can do that as well. So you’re not stuck. It’s really important that one of the homeschooling joys is that flexibility. So you don’t have to upload them all. You can upload some of them. You can choose something different to upload yourself. And also what I love is you can upload photographs of your child getting into their PDAHPA program. All of that goes together.
to have, we call it a government report, you know, that you get at the end. But as a parent, personally, it’s a keepsake. I look at that and I think that, you know, I don’t have to keep all those boxes of work that I’ve got through the year. I’ve got this one report that’s got all their best pieces of work. It’s got photographs of excursions and things that they’ve done. And it’s a really beautiful keepsake to have each year of your child’s progress.
Brett (28:41)
you
Yeah, to give context, it ends up being something like a 60 page document that we produce at the end of the year that you then submit to the Department of Education. So you can see we’ve certainly tried to take the heavy lifting out of it for families so you can get stuck into the learning and enjoyment of that within itself. So, Alan, I think we covered those two topics very, very clearly. Again, if you are a Yuka family or soon to be Yuka family, highly recommend that you
look at the government registration, government reporting, it will save you hours and hours and probably many tears to be fair. And you can then, like I said a little bit earlier, focus on having fun and educating with your child as well. with that being said, Alan, any final thoughts on registration reporting?
Ellen (29:48)
think the most important thing is to view it with a positive outlook. mean, it’s something we all have to do. And we’ve got a choice about whether we look at this in a positive light or whether we look at it in a negative light. After doing it for 10 years, I can say that, you know, I wouldn’t do a good job if I didn’t have a plan. And, you know, often people will come and they are not familiar with homeschooling and they might say, you know, homeschooling, do you actually even do any work?
how wonderful it is to able to whip out one of those reports or your registration go, actually, look, here it is, I’m covering the full curriculum. And they’ll be so shocked that you even have that kind of insight into what your child’s doing. Because when they’re at mainstream school, you have no idea what they’re doing in term three geography. So look at it with a positive light and realize it’s going to provide your child with an excellent education, having a great plan and a great way of assessing that learning.
Brett (30:41)
Excellent, well said. So if you are looking into changing the direction and moving into homeschooling, we would love to have you come and check us out over here at UCAT. But secondarily to that is if you know any friends or family who are also considering homeschooling, send them this episode so they can get a bit better grasp on a couple of the really key important aspects that you need to consider and take on board when you are looking.
to embark on that new journey of homeschooling. So thank you very much. Hope you got some value out of this. And if you have any follow -up questions relating to registration or reporting, you can always go to yucca .edu .au and jump into the bottom right -hand corner and chat to our team and ask them as many questions as you feel. So thank you very much, Ellen. See you on the next one.
Ellen (31:33)
Thanks, Brett
