Homeschooling in BC
Registered or enrolled? What BC asks of you, and when.
Published 4 August 2026 · Last reviewed 6 August 2026
The short answer
In BC, your child is either a registered home learner, also called a homeschooler, or enrolled in a school. Registered means you run their education yourself, and you notify a school each year by September 30. Enrolled means a school runs it, in a classroom or online, and the program is theirs. You must do one or the other from the school year your child turns six until they turn sixteen. Registering is optional the year they turn five.
Those two words do almost all the work in BC's system, and most of the confusion comes from using them loosely. Here is what each one actually means.
Registered means the education is yours
A registered home learner is a child whose parent provides the educational program. You choose what your child learns, how, in what order, and how you know it worked.
Registering is not an application. You are not asking permission. You notify a school of your choice that you intend to educate your child at home, and a public school principal must register your child if you ask. The school records it and tells the Ministry of Education and Child Care. That is the whole transaction.
What registered home learning is not, in the Ministry's own terms: it is not supervised by a BC-certified teacher, not required to follow the provincial curriculum, and not inspected by the Ministry. The school you register with has no authority to approve or oversee what you do.
Two obligations come with it. You must provide your child with an educational program, which the law defines broadly as a set of learning activities designed to make a child literate, develop their potential, and give them the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to contribute to society and the economy. In your child's case, you decide how that definition is met. You must also provide a healthy and supportive environment for learning.
Enrolled means the education is the school's
An enrolled student is a child in an educational program provided by a school district or an independent school authority. That covers a neighbourhood school, an independent school, and online learning. In all three, the school plans the program, selects the materials, facilitates the learning, documents it, and evaluates your child.
Families whose children learn at home through an online learning school often describe themselves as homeschoolers. Legally they are not. Their children are enrolled students. The distinction is not about where the learning happens. It is about who is responsible for it.
What a school must do while it carries that responsibility depends on what kind of school it is. Public schools and online learning schools run on BC-certified teachers, the provincial curriculum, and report cards.
Independent schools are certified in four groups, and the group decides. Group 1, Group 2 and Group 4 schools must employ certified teachers and teach the provincial curriculum, and their students can qualify for the BC Certificate of Graduation. A Group 3 school is certified and inspected too, and a child there is an enrolled student like any other. But it is not required to hire certified teachers or teach the provincial curriculum, its students cannot earn the Certificate there, and it receives no provincial operating grant. Ask an independent school which group it is certified in before you decide.
The difference at a glance
The right column describes every enrolled setting but one. A Group 3 independent school is enrolment too, and the rules in that column do not apply to it.
| Requirement | Registered home learner | Enrolled student (except a Group 3 independent school) |
|---|---|---|
| Who plans and delivers the program | You | A BC-certified teacher employed by the school |
| Must follow the BC curriculum | No | Yes |
| Who evaluates progress and writes report cards | You, if you choose to at all | A BC-certified teacher |
| Foundation Skills and graduation assessments | Optional | Required |
| Religious beliefs may be taught | Yes | Yes at an independent school, no at a public school |
| Inspected by the Ministry | No | Yes |
| Eligible for a BC Certificate of Graduation (Dogwood) | No, not through home learning alone | Yes |
| Status on the school's records | Registered homeschooler | Enrolled student |
When you have to do something, and by when
BC's requirement starts with age, not with a grade. Children resident in BC must take part in an educational program from age five or six until they turn sixteen, and registering as a home learner is one of the two ways to satisfy that.
The year your child turns five is a choice. You may register or enrol them, or you may wait. The law lets a parent defer a child's entry by one school year.
The school year your child turns six is not a choice. By September 30 of that year, your child must be registered as a home learner or enrolled in a school, and that stays true every year until they reach sixteen. Failing to register a child you are educating at home is an offence under the School Act.
| Your child's age that school year | What BC requires |
|---|---|
| Turns five (five by December 31) | Optional. Register, enrol, or wait one year |
| Turns six (six by December 31) | Required by September 30. Register or enrol |
| Six to sixteen | Required every year by September 30. Register or enrol |
| Sixteen to nineteen | Optional. Registration is available but no longer required |
Registration is annual. It does not roll over. A family that registers in September 2026 registers again in September 2027.
How to register a home learner
- Choose a registering school.
You may register with a public school, an independent school, a francophone school, or an online learning school. A public school principal must register your child, whether or not you live in that catchment. An independent school decides for itself whether it registers home learners, and it may charge a fee to do so.
- Notify the school.
Tell them you intend to educate your child at home. Ask what their process is; districts and schools each run their own.
- Provide the basics.
The school reports your child to the Ministry on a standard data form, and it needs five things: your child's Personal Education Number, legal name, date of birth, gender, and BC residential postal code. If your child does not have a Personal Education Number, the school requests one.
- Do it by September 30.
If you are leaving the school system partway through a year, register at the point you leave rather than waiting for the next September.
Ask the school what it offers before you pick one. Every registering school must offer you evaluation and assessment services free of charge. Public schools must also lend educational resource materials, on a similar basis to what enrolled students get. Independent schools must offer the assessment services they normally give their own students, and may lend materials. Either kind may ask for a deposit on borrowed materials. You are free to accept or reject any of it.
Money moves, but not to you. The province pays the registering school a grant for each registered home learner, currently $250 to a public school and $175 to a qualifying independent school authority. The grant covers the school's administrative cost of registering you and offering those services. No provincial funding goes to parents.
How to enrol
For a Vancouver neighbourhood school (a public school), enrolment runs on the district's calendar rather than the province's. The Vancouver School Board's priority kindergarten registration window opens November 1 and closes January 31 for the following September, in two steps: an online application, then an appointment at your catchment school with your documents. Applying anywhere inside the window counts the same, and if a school has more applicants than seats the district holds a draw. Applications after January 31 are processed after the on-time ones. Choice programs such as French Immersion take a separate application, in a separate window, and require catchment registration first.
For online learning, you contact a school that offers it. Provincial online learning schools take students from anywhere in BC; district online learning schools take students living in their district. One rule matters for young children: a student in Kindergarten to Grade 7 must take a full program at a single online learning school. Splitting courses between schools starts at Grade 8.
Why families enrol instead
The honest reasons to enrol are worth naming, because they are the things registering gives up. They describe the same schools as the table above.
- A certified teacher carries the program. Planning, resources, assessment, and documentation are someone else's professional responsibility.
- Report cards and a record. Progress is evaluated and documented by a BC-certified teacher.
- The graduation credential. A registered home learner cannot earn a BC Certificate of Graduation through home learning alone. There are routes back, including enrolling later, and from Grade 10 a registered home learner may take online learning courses for credit while staying registered. But the credential does not come from the registered pathway by itself.
- Support for disabilities and diverse abilities. This is the sharpest one. Enrolled students may be entitled to supports funded by the province. Registered home learners are not eligible for inclusive education supports through their registering school, and are not eligible for help developing their program. A parent choosing to register is choosing to source and fund that support themselves.
Registering gives up all of that in exchange for one thing: the program is yours. Whether that trade is right depends on your child and on what you can carry.
Changing your mind
The pathway is not a one-way door. Registered home learners may move in and out of the school system as their needs change. Schools should accept a home-learning registration at any time of year, not only in September, and a family that withdraws a child from school partway through a year should register at that point. To go the other way, contact a school district or an independent school and they will place your child.
The September 30 date is when registration is due, not the only day it can happen.
Where Trellis sits
Trellis: An Acton Academy is a learning community in Vancouver, BC for families on the registered pathway. Parents register their children as home learners each year and remain their child's educational decision-makers.
This page answers what BC asks of you. It does not answer whether a specific program is the right fit for your child, or how a particular arrangement would work for your family. If you are weighing that, book a parent conversation and ask directly.
Sources
All read August 3, 2026, except where noted.
Correction record. No external listing or profile repeats the facts on this page yet. When one does, it is recorded here and updated whenever a fact on this page changes.
August 6, 2026. The description of enrolment was corrected. An earlier version said that being enrolled always means a certified teacher, the provincial curriculum, and report cards. That holds at every school but one. It does not hold at a Group 3 independent school, which is an enrolled setting under different rules.