Homeschooling in New Brunswick
What New Brunswick actually asks of a family teaching their own children. Written plainly, and honest where the answer is that nobody asks for anything.
CanadaFiling requiredWho is in charge
The school district reviews; the MINISTER approves. Home schooling in New Brunswick requires approval, not merely notification.
Who actually reviews your child
School district (review) then the Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development (approval).
What you must file
Annual home schooling application form
Must be repeated each year. The official 2026-27 application form prints: 'Deadline for submitting information form to School District Office - September 25'. That date is on the FORM, not in the Education Act section quoted, and the gnb.ca HTML page still prints no date. Treat 25 September as the operational deadline a district enforces, and confirm with the district before a family relies on it.
Goes to: The parent's school district, which reviews it and forwards it to the Minister for approval
The program must meet the 'effective instruction' standard and cover the public school curriculum areas: language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, health and physical education, French, technology, art and music, and career development.
Not required, but often assumed
Progress reports, portfolio, test scores
Not required.
The words a reviewer uses
New Brunswick curriculum (grade-level learning outcomes published on the NB curriculum website)
Big Idea · Global Competency · Context · learning outcome
The part the paperwork does not cover
Filing on time is the easy half. The harder half is the year in between: showing what your child actually learned, in words the reviewer recognises, without turning your home into a school.
That is what this tool is for. You say what your child did, in a sentence. It maps that to the published standards we hold for New Brunswick, which today are English (288 of 288), Mathematics (192 of 496), Science (504 of 535), Social Studies (40 of 193) and Physical Education (34 of 95). Those figures count the topics we carry for ages 5 to 12 that cite one of New Brunswick's published standards. Then it builds the record you can hand over the day someone asks. See how it works.
Other places in Canada
Sources last checked on 2026-08-11: Home schooling - Government of New Brunswick. That is the date we checked, not the date the rule last changed.
Check it yourself: the source we used.