On 11 December 2025, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) published a circular on home education. This circular was directed to Education Officials, District Managers, School Principals and the Home Education Community. This circular was distributed to the National Task Team (NTT) responsible for drafting home education regulations on 24 February 2026.

This is the third circular on home education. Circulars published this far are the following:

• Circular S14 of 2020 : Home Education in the context of Covid-19
• Circular S15 of 2022 : Home Education registration within the context of online schools
• Circular S24 of 2025 : Guidance on Home Education Curriculum and Assessment

What is the status a circular?

A circular is not a law that is binding on the public. However it is an instruction that is binding on officials and they are likely to apply the interpretation contained in the circular when exercising their administrative functions.

If parents do not agree with the interpretation provided with the circular, it will result in conflict between parents and officials. This has already happened when the KZN Education Department declined applications on the basis of Circular S15 of 2022, because officials viewed the education programme chosen by parents as an online school.

The guidance provided by S24 of 2025 is temporary in nature, until regulations are published.

What does Circular S24 say?

The circular provides guidance on two matters:

• How to determine whether curriculums are predominantly comparable with the national curriculum as required by S51(2)(a)(iii) of the BELA Act.
• How to determine a standard that is not inferior to the standard determined in the national curriculum statement.

Curriculum

Enforcement of the S51 curriculum requirement is difficult to enforce, because it is vague and it contradicts other sections in S51. Read article here.

The aim of this circular is to provide more clarity on the curriculum requirement. It proposes that curriculums are compared by considering the following factors:

• Age appropriate and grade-appropriate learning: An important reason why many parents choose home education is because it allows learners to progress at their own pace according to the development of their personality. Age / Grade appropriate learning will require that the contents that learners must master is determined by their age or grade, irrespective of the personal development or ability. A rigid interpretation of age- or grade-appropriate learning risks undermining the flexibility inherent in home education and may conflict with the constitutional requirement that administrative decisions serve the best interests of the child.
  
  
• Progressive acquisition of knowledge and skills … alligned with the broad aims of the national curriculum: The National Curriculum Statement (NCS) documents state that it “aims to produce learners that are able to …” and then it lists things such as creative thinking, problem solving, etc. Things that few people will disagree with. Although there is nothing objectionable to this clarification, it is of little value to clarify how curriculums be compared.
  
  
• Exposure to broad learning fields : The NCS describes subjects, instructional time to be allocated to each subject, number of assessments per term, contents and skills. The circular states that the educational programme must provide exposure to broad learning fields recognised in the National Curriculum. How “broad learning fields” can be mapped to the NCS is however not described. The introduction of new undefined concepts such as “broad learning fields” risks expanding statutory requirements beyond what Parliament enacted.
  
  
• Meaning of “comparable” : The circular further states that the word “comparable” does not mean identical content or structure, but requires the consideration of engagement with broad learning fields, progressive development and a coherent educational experience with suitable depth and breadth. This process introduces even more undefined concepts and provides no guidance on how these concepts are to be used for comparison purposes. Such a process is likely complex and susceptible to subjective judgments.
  
  
• Evidence for comparison : The circular then lists different types of evidence that parents can provide to demonstrate curriculum comparability. Parents can choose what type of evidence they want to provide in order to enable officials to perform curriculum comparisons. However, the evidence chosen parents might not be useful to officials for comparison purposes.

Assessment

The BELA Act requires that home learners must be assessed "against a standard that is not inferior to the standard determined in the National Curriculum Statement". However S29(3)(c) requires that independent education institutions must "maintain standards that are not inferior to standards at comparable public educational institutions". This means home learners are evaluated against a theoretical standard in the NCS, while independent schools are evaluated against standards of actual public schools. This means that different standards apply to home learners than to independent schools. The distinction raises questions about whether the evaluation framework for home education is administratively proportionate compared to other recognised forms of alternative education.

This is further complicated because the standard maintained at an independent school is a collective concept, which cannot logically apply to individualised home-based learning. (Read more here) This raises questions about whether applying institution-based standards to individualised home education is constitutionally appropriate and proportionate.

Compliance can be obtained by providing a diverse types of evidence. This evidence must be evaluated by a competent assessor as defined in the BELA Act. The assessor must determine whether the standard of education is not inferior by considering things such as undefined concepts such as meaningful learning, progression across fields, development of core competencies and broad alignment with phase-end expectations of the NCS. Such an evaluation is complex and susceptible to subjective judgments.

To find assessors that can use the diverse forms of evidence to determine the standard of education received will probably be difficult for competent assessors that do not have an understanding of home education. Competent assessors are trained to assess against the clearly defined NCS and not the undefined concepts in the circular. This is exacerbated by the exclusion by the BELA Act definition of professionals such as educational psychologists and other therapists that are registered with the Health Professional Council as competent assessors.

A recent survey highlighted the reality that a large percentage of parents that applied for registration were not registered. The Act does however exempt unregistered learners from the obligation to submit end of phase assessments. However, if a learner is not registered, it will not be possible to process the assessment reports, because the capturing of the assessment results should be linked to the registration number of the learner. The circular does not address this matter. It assumes a functioning registration system that does not yet exist in practice.

The circular places no obligations on officials to process the assessment reports. If the processing of assessment reports does not result in remedial actions, the assessments do not serve any reasonable purpose. Even in provinces where the majority of applications are timeously processed, there is probably not administrative capacity to process assessment reports and take remedial actions if needed.

Furthermore, according to S51(2)(b)(ii), parents must undertake to "monitor the learner’s academic progress". For parents that diligently honor this undertaking, a end-of-phase assessment will merely confirm what the parents already know. For parents who already fulfil statutory monitoring responsibilities, mandatory external assessments may provide limited additional educational value relative to their cost and administrative burden.

Conclusion

The circular will probably increase conflict between officials and parents for the following reasons:

• Parents have limited certainty that officials will regard their curriculum as comparable with the NCS due to the vague and subjective comparison process.
• Parents have little certainty what the outcome of assessments will be, given their complex and subjective nature.
• While parents already lack certainty that registration applications are processed timeously, they have even less certainty that assessment reports will be processed. What exacerbates this is that parents are expected to pay for competent assessors, while officials might not even process assessment reports.
• Even if assessment reports are processed, parents have no certainty what officials will do with the results. Will they offer remedial services or cancel registrations?

Although it will still take a while before the regulations are published, the circular provides some insight into what the DBE wants in the regulations. This allows parents to prepare for when the regulations are published for public comment.

Although public engagement during the BELA process did not substantially change the wording of the Act, Circular S24 suggests an effort by the DBE to reassure home educators that flexibility in curriculum choice and assessment methods remains possible. At the same time, this flexibility introduces complex comparison processes that may place significant administrative burdens on the Department itself.

The issues raised by Circular S24 highlight the importance of continued public engagement during the development of the home education regulations. Clear, objective and proportionate regulatory standards will be essential to avoid unnecessary conflict and to ensure that administrative discretion is exercised consistently and fairly.

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