NC Homeschool Requirements
Parents/guardians residing in North Carolina and desiring, in lieu of conventional school attendance, to home school their school-age children must:
Hold at least a high school diploma or its equivalent.
Send to DNPE a Notice of Intent to Operate a Home School. The notice must include the name and address of the school along with the name of the school's owner and chief administrator. To avoid needless delays, always use this Notice of Intent form when sending your notice of intent.
Elect to operate under either Part 1 or Part 2 of Article 39 of the North Carolina General Statutes as a religious or as a non-religious school.
Operate the school "on a regular schedule, excluding reasonable holidays and vacations, during at least nine calendar months of the year."
Maintain at the school disease immunization and annual attendance records for each student.
Have a nationally standardized achievement test administered annually to each student. The test must involve the subject areas of English grammar, reading, spelling, and mathematics. Records of the test results must be retained at the home school for at least one year and made available to DNPE when requested.
The first standardized test must be administered within one year of the home school start date, and then annually thereafter.
Notify DNPE when the school is no longer in operation.
While not mandated by law, home schools are ENCOURAGED to:
Offer instruction of at least similar quality, scope and duration as local conventional schools.
Maintain at least five clock hours of instruction with the student(s) each school day.
Conduct instruction each school year for 180 days.
Maintain a current daily log, journal or lesson plan book throughout the entire school year detailing time period for each subject each day and information covered during the specified time period.
Retain records at your school until the student has enrolled in a conventional school or has graduated. (It is a good idea to keep this information indefinitely.)
Information in this blog post was obtained from NC's state homeschool administration website: https://ncadmin.nc.gov/citizens/home-school-information
