Free Homeschool Resources for Western Australia Families

The free resource landscape for WA home educators is considerably better than most families realise when they start out. Between the state curriculum authority, national advocacy bodies, library systems, and community networks, a family can build a functional, moderator-ready home education program for little to no cost during the early stages. The challenge is knowing where to look and understanding which free resources are actually fit for WA-specific requirements.

SCSA: Your Free Curriculum Foundation

The School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA) is the body that sets the WA Curriculum and Assessment Outline — the same framework your Home Education Moderator will assess your child against. Everything SCSA publishes is publicly available at no cost.

What you can access for free at scsa.wa.edu.au:

• The full WA Curriculum — all eight learning areas, all year levels, from Pre-primary through Year 12. This is your authoritative reference for what counts as curriculum-aligned learning.
• Achievement Standards — plain-language descriptions of what students should know and be able to do by the end of each year level. These are the benchmarks your moderator is using when they assess your child's progress. Reading them directly eliminates guesswork.
• Scope and Sequence documents — these show how skills build across year levels, which helps you understand where your child is in a progression rather than just whether they have met a single year-level standard.
• Curriculum teaching and learning examples — sample activities that demonstrate how outcomes can be taught. These are helpful for translating abstract curriculum language into practical learning activities.

If you read nothing else before your first moderator visit, read the Achievement Standards for your child's approximate year level in English and Mathematics. The language can be dense, but understanding it means you are no longer guessing what the moderator is looking for.

WA Department of Education: Registration Guidance and Exemplars

The Department of Education's home education web pages provide:

• Registration application forms — downloadable from the Department's website
• Five educational program exemplars — static PDF examples of goal-based, general, traditional, topic-based, and curriculum-focused educational programs. These are genuinely useful as reference points for what a program document can look like.
• Information sheets on moderator expectations, evaluation processes, and legal requirements

The limitation of Department materials is that they tell you what the rules are and what a finished product looks like, but provide no working tools for the ongoing documentation process. The exemplars are static PDFs — you cannot edit them and they include no tracking, logging, or work-sample organisation systems.

Home Education WA (HEWA): Community and Advocacy

HEWA is the peak advocacy body for WA home educators and one of the most practically useful free resources in the state. Their website (homeeducationwa.asn.au) provides:

• Planning and reporting guidance — plain-language explanations of how to write an educational program, what moderators assess, and how to organise evidence of progress
• Moderator visit information — including an important clarification that parents are NOT required to pre-fill the moderator's evaluation report template, a common source of confusion
• Legal rights information — including the Notice of Concern and appeal process under Sections 52 and 53 of the School Education Act 1999
• Workshop recordings — HEWA sells affordable recorded workshops on topics like "Understanding the WA Curriculum" (around $30, or $15 for members). These are not free, but they represent exceptional value for the depth of WA-specific guidance provided.
• Member networks — free community connection to co-ops, local groups, and other home educators in your region

HEWA membership itself is low-cost, and the member network access is one of the highest-value things you can access in WA home education.

Home Education Association (HEA): National Resources

The HEA operates nationally and publishes free state-by-state registration guides. Their WA guide explains the registration process, key legislative provisions, and the moderator evaluation system in plain language.

The HEA also provides a free registration flowchart — a visual step-by-step diagram of the WA registration and evaluation cycle — that is useful to print and keep handy during your first year.

Free Online Curriculum Resources

Several curriculum platforms have free tiers or genuinely usable free content:

Khan Academy — free comprehensive mathematics and science curriculum from primary through senior secondary level. Well-structured, progress-tracking built in. The progress data is exportable and makes excellent portfolio evidence. Does not map directly to WA Curriculum language but covers the same content, and the gap is easy to bridge with a brief annotation.

ABC Education — Australian Broadcasting Corporation's education resource site (education.abc.net.au) provides free videos, interactives, and curriculum-linked activities across all learning areas for primary and lower secondary. Content is explicitly linked to Australian Curriculum outcomes, which map closely to WA Curriculum outcomes. Free and genuinely high quality.

Reading Eggs (trial) — the reading program offers a free trial period. If you use a paid subscription longer-term, the reports it generates are useful assessment evidence.

Typing.com — free typing curriculum, relevant to Technologies in the WA Curriculum (Digital Technologies).

Stile — science platform with some free content, though full access requires a subscription.

Library Networks

The Perth metropolitan public library network and regional library systems are a vastly underused free curriculum resource. WA public libraries provide:

• Unlimited borrowing of physical books, including a rich selection of non-fiction aligned to HASS, Science, and STEM learning areas
• Access to audiobooks via apps like BorrowBox (free with library card)
• Online database access — includes encyclopaedias, reference databases, and periodicals useful for research projects
• Digital magazine access through apps like Libby
• Quiet study and working spaces during school hours

The State Library of WA additionally provides access to several premium databases free of charge to WA card holders, including content useful for secondary-level research.

For regional and remote families, WA's Library and Information Service operates a remote borrowing program that ships physical resources.

Community Networks: Co-ops and Facebook Groups

The WA home education Facebook community — principally the "Homeschooling Perth" and "WA Home Education" groups — is a free resource for connecting with families who share resources, pass on used curriculum materials, recommend local groups, and offer practical advice. The practical information quality is variable, but the resource-sharing economy is real and valuable.

What free community resources do not provide is systematic, legally accurate documentation guidance. For building the actual portfolio and educational program documents that a WA moderator will assess, you need tools designed specifically for WA's dual-requirement system — forward planning and backward evidence, both aligned to the WA Curriculum.

The Western Australia Portfolio & Assessment Templates fills that gap: WA Curriculum-aligned planning templates, work sample logs for all eight learning areas, and a moderator preparation system built around what Section 51 evaluations actually require. The free resources above get you started; the templates get you through your evaluation with confidence.

See more Australia homeschool guides →