Message from the Board

Homeschooling is a laboratory for experimenting with forms of education that are different from the school model. Parent-educators are experts on their children. They have the great responsibility of developing and implementing an educational project adapted to their family reality and to the needs of their children. 

Moreover, the law does not require parents to be experts in education, nor experts in the educational model that is conveyed by the Quebec Education Program (QEP), the Progression of Learning, etc. Thus, the law provides that home education may be different from the school model, specifying that it must be appropriate, but not equivalent. AQED therefore considers that the 2019 regulation and the DEM requirements for this year 2020-2021 that result from it are inappropriate to the homeschooling context since they lead to a reproduction of the school model. 

See, in this regard, this excerpt (translated) from the legal interpretation of counsel retained by AQED: “[…] we are of the opinion that the DEM’s application of the newly amended Regulation is contrary to the original intent of the legislator as well as to the spirit of the Education Act that homeschooling be appropriate and not equal (ou equivalent) to that received in regular school.” 

Yet, the DEM requires parents to break down all documentation according to the QEP competencies, an administrative task that is overly burdensome and inappropriate. This burden then becomes an impediment to homeschooling in the spirit of allowing parents to choose an alternative education, as well as a source of stress and pressure on families, discouraging them from continuing to exercise their right to educate their children at home. AQED considers that it is up to the resource persons, and not the parents, to evaluate the activities carried out in each subject from an academic perspective. 

AQED currently represents 2,250 families, or approximately 5,000 children out of a total of 12,000 children registered with the DEM. We need to take advantage of AQED’s current representational strength to move the situation towards a more acceptable monitoring framework for families. Together we can make a difference.

AQED encourages you to adopt the following strategies:

• Complete the documents to the best of your knowledge as a parent-educator and not as an educational professional. Your documents should reflect your actual homeschooling practice, consistent with your educational intentions, whether they follow the school model closely or not. Trust yourself. 
• Manage DEM change requests with confidence and composure. Any request for changes to your documents should be justified to you. For both the learning project and the assessments, an oral discussion with your resource person (administrative officer) may lead to a mutual understanding rather than having to modify your documents, or even having to alter your homeschooling practice.
• Have an AQED volunteer accompany you during your meetings with the DEM. Contact your Regional Representative or the member support service, especially if the resource person asks for traces of learning in advance and/or if you do not feel comfortable meeting the current requirements on your own. : visit the page Regional representatives or write to [email protected] 
• The end-of-year evaluation is an option available to parents so that they can follow the progress of their child. If you choose to have your child evaluated by the holder of a teaching licence, a template letter, to be completed and modified as necessary by the teacher, should be available in the Member Area of AQED’s website by the end of January. Based on our experience, this letter seems to meet requirements regarding the information that the DEM wishes to see, while respecting the professional freedom of the evaluator, and being flexible enough to apply to different homeschooling approaches.

In addition, the Board is pursuing discussions with lawyers to see what opportunities there are to change the current legal situation. We will keep you posted on the progress of this investigation.