Approved Learning Programme WA: Writing Your Home Education Plan
When WA parents first register for home education, the Department of Education asks them to bring an "educational program" to their initial moderator meeting. For most families, that request triggers a long, anxious Google session that produces a lot of generic results and not much clarity on what WA moderators actually need to see.
Here is what the legislation actually says, what a strong educational program looks like in practice, and how to write one without losing a week of your life to it.
What the Law Actually Requires
Under the School Education Act 1999 (WA), an educational program is defined as "an organised set of learning activities designed to enable a child to develop knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes relevant to the child's individual needs." That is the entire statutory definition.
The Department does not mandate a specific format, a specific template, or a day-by-day lesson plan. The moderator's job is to review your program and assess whether it draws upon the Western Australian Curriculum and Assessment Outline (WACAO), developed by the School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA).
This means your program needs to cover the eight WA Curriculum learning areas and show that you have thought about your child's learning for the year ahead. It does not need to look like a teacher's lesson plan book.
The Department publishes five example program formats on their website — goal-based, general, traditional, topic-based, and curriculum-focused. These examples show the range of approaches they accept. The key takeaway is that flexibility is genuine. What matters is that the program is organised, covers all eight areas, and is tailored to your child rather than being a generic document printed from the internet.
The Eight Learning Areas You Must Address
Every educational program for WA home education must address all eight learning areas under the WA Curriculum:
- English — language, literature, and literacy
- Mathematics — number and algebra, measurement and geometry, statistics and probability
- Science — science understanding, science as a human endeavour, inquiry skills
- Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) — history, geography, civics and citizenship, economics and business
- The Arts — dance, drama, media arts, music, visual arts
- Technologies — design and technologies, digital technologies
- Health and Physical Education (HPE) — personal and community health, movement and physical activity
- Languages — compulsory from Year 3 to Year 8; the specific language is not prescribed
For Years 9 and 10, Technologies, The Arts, and Languages become optional — but they must appear in your program through Year 8.
Your program does not need to give equal weight to every area. If your child is working intensively on English and Maths because of specific gaps, your plan can reflect that emphasis while still acknowledging how you will address the other areas.
What to Actually Write
A functional educational program for a WA moderator typically covers:
1. Educational philosophy (one paragraph). A brief statement of how and why you educate the way you do. Charlotte Mason, structured school-at-home, unschooling, eclectic — whatever your approach, name it and explain it briefly. This gives the moderator context for the rest of the document.
2. Resources and curriculum materials (a list). List the textbooks, online programs, community classes, library resources, and any other learning tools you plan to use. You do not need to list every book — name the main resources for each subject area. If you use a packaged curriculum like My Homeschool or a platform like Mathletics, include it here.
3. Goals by learning area (the main body). For each of the eight areas, write two to four broad goals for the year. These do not need to be copied verbatim from SCSA achievement standards. Write them in plain language: "By the end of this year, I want [child's name] to be reading independently at a Year 4 level and writing structured paragraphs with a clear main idea."
Moderators assess progress against WA Curriculum standards as a benchmark but apply professional judgment to account for the child's individual abilities. You are not being assessed on whether your child hits every SCSA milestone — you are being assessed on whether you have a genuine, organised plan and whether the child is progressing.
4. Extracurricular and social activities (brief). Note any co-op groups, sport, music lessons, drama classes, community activities, or structured play groups. This satisfies the HPE and The Arts components partially and demonstrates the child's broader social and physical development.
5. Assessment approach (a sentence or two). Briefly explain how you will track learning across the year — a weekly portfolio, a learning journal, digital platform reports, or another method. This sets up your evidence of learning discussion for the next visit.
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Aligning Your Approach with the WA Curriculum Without Losing Your Mind
The WACAO is a large document. For most home educators, trying to read it in full is a path to paralysis. The practical approach is to focus on two elements: the Scope and Sequence (which shows the flow of skill development across years) and the Achievement Standards (which describe what students should know by the end of each year).
When you sit down to write your program goals, ask a simple question for each area: "What do I want my child to be able to do by the end of this year that they cannot do now?" That answer, phrased in concrete terms, is your goal. Then, if you want to check it against the curriculum, look up the relevant Year Level Achievement Standard on the SCSA website and confirm you are in roughly the right territory.
You do not need to cite SCSA codes in your program document. The moderator can make that connection. Your job is to demonstrate that your goals are age-appropriate and progressive.
Unschooling and natural learning families have the most friction here. If your child does not do structured lessons, you cannot write a traditional lesson plan — but you can write a program that describes the philosophy, names the resources available in your home environment, and outlines the general knowledge areas you expect the child to encounter through interest-led learning over the coming year. WA moderators assess this against the WACAO, but they use professional judgment. A thoughtful, coherent unschooling plan will generally pass. A blank document will not.
Structuring the Document
A practical format for most families:
- One to two pages total for primary-aged children (pre-primary to Year 6)
- Two to three pages for secondary-aged students (Years 7 to 10)
- Three to five pages for senior secondary (Years 11 and 12), where the program needs to be more detailed to support post-secondary pathways
Keep the language plain and honest. Write it as a plan for your child, not as a performance for a bureaucrat. Moderators read dozens of these documents and respond far better to genuine, child-specific plans than to documents clearly assembled from template language.
If you update the program mid-year — because your child's needs changed, because a resource did not work, or because you shifted philosophical direction — that is completely acceptable. Bring the updated version to the next moderator visit. Demonstrating that your plan is a living document is evidence of engaged, responsive parenting, not non-compliance.
Common Mistakes in WA Educational Programs
Leaving out learning areas. Even if you do not do structured Languages lessons, Languages must appear somewhere in the program — even as a brief mention of informal exposure or a language app.
Using US-format documents. Programs that reference attendance logs, 180 school days, semester grades, or GPA immediately read as foreign to a WA moderator. These concepts do not apply under the School Education Act 1999. They undermine the document's credibility.
Making it too vague. "My child will learn maths this year" is not a program. "My child will work through a Year 4 Maths curriculum covering fractions, multiplication to 12x12, and basic geometry, using Khan Academy and a Singapore Maths workbook" is a program.
Making it too rigid. A day-by-day timetable with hourly lessons looks structured but actually signals to moderators that you are not accounting for the child's individual needs — which is one of the core principles of WA home education law. A broadly organised plan with flexibility built in is more appropriate.
Treating it as a one-time document. Your program at the initial meeting is the starting point. By the time of your annual evaluation, it should have evolved to reflect what actually happened over the year — which is where your portfolio of evidence picks up the thread.
Connecting Program to Portfolio
The educational program and the evidence portfolio are two sides of the same coin. The program answers "what do you intend to teach?" The portfolio answers "what did the child actually learn?"
This is the dual documentation requirement that creates the most anxiety for WA home educators — because it means the program needs to be forward-looking while the evidence needs to be backward-looking, and the moderator assesses both in the same visit.
The practical solution is to use your program goals as the scaffolding for your portfolio. If your program says you will cover Year 4 fractions in Maths, your portfolio needs to contain dated evidence of fractions work from across the year. If your program says you will use a nature journal for Science, your portfolio needs to show that nature journal with entries across multiple months.
Building this connection deliberately — so that your program and your portfolio reference each other — makes the moderator's assessment straightforward. It also makes the visit much shorter, because the moderator is not hunting for alignment that is not obvious.
The Western Australia Portfolio & Assessment Templates includes an educational program template structured for the WA context, with sections for each of the eight learning areas and a companion evidence checklist that maps directly back to the program goals — so the connection between forward planning and backward documentation is built in rather than retrofitted.
For more on what to bring to the actual evaluation meeting, the WA homeschool moderator visit post covers the process in detail, including what moderators can and cannot request.
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