Be accepted by September 29 — every year. Two evaluations. Dated samples of work. That's the shape. About 6 minutes.
Three required beats and one long stretch of teaching in the middle — though that middle stretch carries two duties of its own, which most first-year guides leave out. The fall/spring rhythm for the evaluations is common practice, not a rule.
For your program to attract Alberta's home education funding, your supervising authority must have accepted it no later than September 29. Alberta says a parent must have notified and been accepted before September 30, then states plainly that a student is not eligible for funding if a home education program is accepted after September 29. Same date, said twice.
Read that again for the part that catches people: it's their acceptance, not your submission.
Alberta attaches a second sentence that matters more to our readers than the first: this includes situations where a student changes from an online or regular program to home education after September 29. If you're pulling a child out of school mid-year, that sentence is yours.
And under the Home Education Regulation, an authority has up to 15 school days to decide and tell you. That's three calendar weeks and change — more once you count Labour Day and any divisional PD day in September.
So work backwards, and be less generous with yourself than the arithmetic suggests. Notify in the first week of September and you have roughly a day of margin; notify in late August and you have a real one. Better still, do it in the spring — which is what Alberta Education itself advises, telling parents to consider looking for a supervising authority in the spring before the upcoming school year. (The late-August backstop is our arithmetic on the 15-day window, not a ministry deadline.)
One more planning risk: no Alberta authority is obliged to supervise you — not even the board where you live. A yes is not a formality.
This is the one that quietly costs families money. Notification is not a one-time registration. Under the Regulation, a parent who intends to continue home educating next school year must notify their authority of that intention, and Alberta's own quick-reference answers "Am I required to fill out a notification form every year that I intend to home educate my child?" with Yes — for supervised and unsupervised families alike.
A second-year parent who assumes last year's registration carries over can miss September 29 without ever realising there was something to do.
September 29 is a funding deadline, not a permission deadline. Alberta is explicit: a parent may start a home education program at any time.
Two routes stay open:
If you've missed it, the useful move is to get supervised now and put your energy into being accepted early next spring.
You submit a notification to your chosen supervising authority. It identifies your family and each child, and it states whether your program will follow Alberta's Programs of Study, the Schedule of Learning Outcomes in the Regulation (Alberta's own Handbook shortens this to SOLO), or a combination of the two — the Handbook confirms you may mix them.
If you choose SOLO — or any program that doesn't follow the Programs of Study — you have more paperwork, not less. Under the Regulation you must certify that the activities you've selected will let your child achieve the applicable outcomes, and you must give your authority a written description of the program covering:
Your authority has to accept that program, including your selection of activities, and each one sets its own submission timeline — so ask early. If you change the program significantly during the year, you must tell them.
You'll also hear "Traditional" and "Aligned" constantly. They are board terms, not ministry terms — neither appears as a program label in the Regulation, the Handbook, or on alberta.ca. Two authorities can use the same word for different arrangements. More on choosing →
Once you're accepted, you'll be assigned a teacher — most authorities call them your facilitator, though that word isn't in the Regulation either.
Get the acceptance in writing. Silence is not a yes, and the grant turns on the date they accepted you.
The Regulation's floor is that your authority arranges at least two evaluations of your child's progress each school year (s4(2)(b)), and makes recommendations where they'd help (s4(2)(e)). Alberta's guidance goes further than the Regulation's own text: alberta.ca describes these as formal evaluations conducted by certificated teachers, including a review of the student portfolio.
Two things about how they happen are provincial, and both are in your favour. Under s4(1)(c)–(d), the evaluation must take place at a time and place mutually agreeable to you and the authority, and you have the right to be present if you choose. A facilitator cannot simply assign you a slot at their office and expect you to take it.
What genuinely is authority practice: the fall/spring rhythm, how long the meetings run, whether they happen at your table or over video, and how chatty your facilitator is in between. That variation is real, and it's one of the six levers on the next page.
Most of this page is about what your authority must do. These two are on you — and they apply to every Alberta home-educating family, supervised or not, funded or not. Under s4(1) of the Home Education Regulation you must:
Alberta's Handbook is blunt about why it matters: a supervising authority may ask the parent to provide these records when conducting their evaluations, and an unsupervised family may be required to submit these records to the Ministry should there be an investigation.
The reassuring part is that the bar is lower than parents fear. Alberta's own quick-reference answers "Must I keep all of my child's work as proof of their learning?" with "No, only dated samples" — for supervised and unsupervised families alike.
Portfolio is a loose word. In practice it's an organized record showing what your child covered and how they progressed:
You don't need all of it. Alberta asks for dated samples, not every worksheet — but "dated" isn't decoration, it's the word the Regulation uses. What a certificated teacher needs to see is growth, and most portfolio anxiety comes from parents assuming they need far more than they do.
✅ Your next step → Choose a supervising authority
Or jump to a related tool:
Sources: Home Education Regulation AR 89/2019 (consolidated to AR 160/2025) — s1.1 and s1.2 for the unsupervised route and the Director's investigation and termination powers, s2(2) for annual re-notification, s2(3)(b) for the 15-school-day decision window, s3(5)–(7) for the program description a non-Programs-of-Study program requires, s4(1)(a)–(b) for the parent's own duty to evaluate at regular intervals and keep dated samples of student work, s4(1)(c)–(d) for the mutually-agreeable time and place and your right to be present, s4(2)(b) and s4(2)(e) for the at-least-two evaluations and the recommendations. Home education — Alberta.ca for the September 29 wording, the mid-year switch-in sentence, "a parent may start a home education program at any time", the spring-search advice, the myPass route, and for the description of the two evaluations as formal evaluations by certificated teachers including a review of the student portfolio — that description is Alberta's guidance, not language in the Regulation. Home Education Handbook (April 2025) for the SOLO name, combining outcomes, the annual notification and dated-samples answers in its parent quick-reference, and the records an authority or the Ministry may ask for. Funding Manual for School Authorities 2026/27 for the September 29 count date. "Traditional", "Aligned" and "facilitator" are board usage, not ministry terms. Checked 29 July 2026; re-checked at the start of each school year. Nothing here is legal advice.
Next: What Alberta expects you to teach
The funding rate and the September deadline both move annually, and a page you read in July is worth re-reading in September. Leave an email and we will tell you what changed — that is all we use it for.