The BELA Act requires home educators to submit an assessment report, signed by a competent assessor, at the end of each phase. However, the way the Act frames this requirement creates a significant risk for home education families.

The BELA Act says that home learners must be assessed “against a standard not inferior to the NCS.” In education law, an educational standard is not a mark or percentage — it is an institutional benchmark used to evaluate the overall quality of education provided by a public or independent school.

How standards normally work

In schools, standards are measured collectively by looking at:

• the rigour of the programme, and
• the median or overall performance across many learners.

A child who performs below the median is never used as evidence that a school’s standard is “inferior.” Individual marks do not determine a school’s compliance with national standards.

The problem in BELA

BELA incorrectly applies this collective standard to individual home learners.

This means that a single low mark — which is completely normal in any school — could theoretically be interpreted as “evidence” that the learner’s standard is inferior, and therefore used to question or even cancel a home education registration.

The same score that has no consequence in a school could have serious administrative consequences in home education.

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