Getting started homeschooling in Virginia

CurriculumQuiz checked the linked government or statute page on 2026-10-17. The six notes are notice, subjects, days or hours, assessment, teacher qualifications, and records. A curriculum website can help you choose books. It is not the statute. When this page and a blog disagree, the linked official page wins. If that page is silent, the answer here stays unknown.

Rules change. A summary can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Confirm the linked page, and contact that agency or a qualified attorney about your own facts. Save a copy of the page or the form it names, with the date you read it.

1. Open the official source

The recorded source for Virginia is Virginia Department of Education. Virginia Department of Education. Read it yourself before you buy a curriculum or file a form.

2. Notice or registration

A parent who elects home instruction shall annually notify the division superintendent in August, no later than August 15, of the intention to instruct the child, and shall provide a description of the curriculum limited to a list of subjects for the coming year and evidence of meeting one criterion in subsection A. A parent who moves in or starts after the year has begun notifies as soon as practicable and then complies within 30 days.

If that note does not name a form, a deadline, or an office, the source we read did not give us one. Check official source before you mail or upload anything.

3. Subjects

The annual notice includes a list of subjects to be studied during the coming year. The statute does not name a required set of subjects in the text we read. Subsection A allows a program of study or curriculum, which may be a correspondence or distance program or any other manner.

A curriculum that lists those words is not, by itself, proof that a legal duty is met. Match your plan to the sentence above. Ask the agency when the sentence says the list was not stated.

4. Days and hours

Not stated on official source

Do not borrow a day count from another state. If this note does not state a number, we do not invent one.

5. Assessment

By August 1 after the school year, the parent provides either evidence of a composite score in or above the fourth stanine on a nationally normed standardized achievement test, or an equivalent score on the ACT, SAT, or PSAT, or an evaluation the division superintendent finds shows adequate growth. The evaluation options named in the section include a letter from a person licensed to teach in any state, or a person with a master's degree or higher in an academic discipline, or a report card or transcript from an institution of higher education, a college distance program, or a home-education correspondence school. If evidence is not provided, the program may be placed on probation for one year.

A test that comes with a curriculum is not the same thing as a test an agency requires. Use the sentence above.

6. Teacher qualifications

Subsection A says the parent may elect home instruction if the parent holds a high school diploma, or is a teacher of qualifications prescribed by the Board, or provides a program of study or curriculum, or provides evidence of being able to provide an adequate education. The parent shows evidence of one of those criteria with the annual notice.

A college degree, a teaching certificate, and a high-school diploma are different things. Record only what this sentence names. If it names nothing, check official source.

7. Records

The section requires the annual notice, the subject list, evidence of qualification, and the August 1 evidence of progress. Subsection G limits disclosure of information a parent provides under this section.

Online schools in this directory often keep a grade file. Print curricula usually leave the file with the parent. That describes the product. It is not a ruling that either one satisfies Virginia. Keep what the sentence names.

Withdrawing from public school

The text recorded from the official source does not describe withdrawing from public school. This page does not add a withdrawal rule. Ask the school the child attends, and check official source.

If you are leaving a public school, ask that school what it needs in order to drop the student from its roll. A district can have a local form that the state page does not quote. This page will not supply one.

After the official page, then a curriculum

The quiz ranks programs from grade, style, time, budget, faith, accreditation, and pace. It does not read the Virginia statute, and the state does not change the match percentage. It adds a link back to the state page. The quiz runs in the browser. Quiz answers are never stored or sent. The site uses Google Analytics, which sets cookies, for anonymous usage stats. It does not ask for a child's name.

Style guides on this site list programs by tags and grade spans that are already in the directory. They are not legal checklists: Charlotte Mason, classical, secular, free, and kindergarten.

Come back to the official URL when the school year turns over. If the agency page changed, write to hello-curriculumquiz@agentmail.to and we will re-check the source before we change this summary. You can also embed the short fact box from the state page.