Home Schooling

register your child with the government first, and the process is more straightforward than it sounds.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act, signed into law in September 2024, updated how that registration works rather than removing it. The biggest change: registration is now required from Grade R (around age 5–6) onward, not only from Grade 1 as before. So if you're asking "how to register for home schooling," the process starts with applying to the Head of your own Provincial Department of Basic Education — it's a provincial process, meaning who you register with depends on where you live, even though the curriculum itself is the same no matter which province you're in. One reassuring detail buried in the BELA Act homeschooling rules: if the province doesn't respond to your application within 60 days, your registration is automatically deemed successful. The earlier proposal for compulsory home visits was also dropped from the final Act, though a Head of Department can still request a meeting in a public setting. A constitutional challenge to parts of the Act, brought by the Pestalozzi Trust, is still pending — worth knowing about, though it doesn't change what's required of you today.

Whatever curriculum you choose must meet a standard equivalent to CAPS, South Africa's national school curriculum. Many families use CAPS itself (assessed through SACAI) or IEB, both of which lead straight to an NSC matric. Others choose international routes like Cambridge (Pearson Edexcel), which lead to A-Levels — these need a Universities South Africa (USAf) certificate of exemption before a local university will recognise them, so it's worth planning that step early. End-of-phase assessments, at the end of Grade 3, 6 and 9, must be done by a qualified assessor regardless of which curriculum you pick.

None of this has to be done alone. National online providers like Impaq (Optimi Home), CambriLearn, Curro Online, Teneo Online School, UCT Online High School, Koa Academy, Wingu Academy and Wolkskool (Afrikaans-medium) support families right across the country. Browse the home schooling provider listings below to compare options for your family.