This is part one of a three part series about how to assess learning as a homeschooler, how to create reports, for your own records and if required, for the DBE. Finally, it’s about how to discern when to comply and when to resist unlawful requests and overreach by government officials.
Homeschool Assessments
Part 1 – Homeschool Assessments
In a press release on 11 March 2024, the Department of Basic Education confirmed:
“The Department has no intention of taking away the freedom of curriculum choice from the parents.”
Deon Louw, Deputy Director from the Western Cape Education Department has repeatedly stated:
“Parents are allowed to make use of any curriculum which is not inferior to CAPS and which may include any online support.”
As a home educating parent, your role is to ensure that your child’s right to receive basic education is realised and that your child’s best interests are kept paramount in all decisions pertaining to your child. Your child’s education must meet “the minimum requirements of the national curriculum” – not necessarily all of them! Variation is permitted!
You are not a paid employee of the Department of Basic Education performing the role of a professional teacher. It is therefore important for you to keep the time and energy, both mental and physical energy, you spend on assessment in perspective. We recommend that you do the minimum required to satisfy anyone who needs formal reports and rather concentrate on the daily informal observations and discussions, which are likely to be the most useful to you. You can always write a (more) detailed report later, if or when it may be required.
The national website of the Department of Basic education states:
“After your child has been registered for Home Education you must keep the following:-
- record of attendance
- portfolio of the child’s work
- up- to- date records of the child’s progress
- portfolio of the educational support given to the child
- evidence of the continuous assessment of the child’s work
- evidence of the assessment and or examination at the end of each year
- evidence at the end of grade 3,6 and 9, that shows whether your child has achieved the outcomes for these grades”
Many home education leaders and experts believe that not all these requirements are practical or necessary – so use your own discretion or get professional legal advice for your family. (See our Disclaimer!)
Also watch out for government overreach. Home educating parents are not legally required to submit quarterly reports like school teachers do. In some provinces, Gauteng, for example, the DBE sends an email with a form attached requesting quarterly reports for learners. As you can see from the quoted information in yellow above, this is not compulsory, so it is merely a request – or perhaps some might consider this as an “unlawful requirement”? More about this in Part 3 – Should You Submit Homeschool Reports?
If your children are not registered with the Department of Basic Education, then you will not be asked to submit reports. However, this article will clarify how you can assess learning and create your own portfolio of evidence and reports for record-keeping purposes, if you choose.
What Should you Report?
CAPS is the acronym for the national Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement issued by the Department of Basic Education to guide teachers and schools about what they should teach and assess. If you want to meet the CAPS requirements, then in the table below are the subjects that you should cover weekly.
| Foundation Phase (Grades R-3) | Intermediate Phase (Grades 4-6) | Senior Phase (Grades 7-9) |
| Home Language First Additional Language (2-4 hours per week in Grades 1-3 only) Mathematics Life Skills (Beginning Knowledge, Creative Arts, Physical Education, Personal and Social Well-being) – includes free play too! | Home Language First Additional Language (2-4 hours per week in Grades 1-3 only) Mathematics Natural Sciences and Technology Social Sciences Life Skills (Creative Arts, Physical Education, Personal and Social Well-being) | Home Language First Additional Language Mathematics Natural Sciences Social Sciences Technology Economic Management Sciences Life Orientation Creative Arts |
Remember that home educators are not obliged to follow the national curriculum. You may use any learning resources that you choose and children may learn other subjects and skills besides those listed above!
“You will not reap the fruit of individuality in your children if you clone their education.” ~ Marilyn Howshall
We encourage parents to teach the child, not the curriculum! In other words, your child should always be your priority, not the requirements of any curriculum or anybody who has no relationship with your child! You are free to follow your children’s interests and allow them to pursue their talents and delights too.
What is Assessment and How do Homeschoolers Do it?
The paragraphs in italics below are snippets from the CAPS document:
ASSESSMENT
Assessment is a continuous planned process of identifying, gathering and interpreting information about the performance of learners, using various forms of assessment. It involves four steps: generating and collecting evidence of achievement; evaluating this evidence; recording the findings and using this information to understand and thereby assist the learner’s development in order to improve the process of learning and teaching.
Assessment should be both informal (Assessment for Learning) and formal (Assessment of Learning). In both cases regular feedback should be provided to learners to enhance the learning experience.
INFORMAL OR DAILY ASSESSMENT
Informal or daily assessment…[redacted]… is a daily monitoring of learners’ progress, and may be as simple as stopping during the lesson to observe learners or to discuss with learners how learning is progressing. Informal assessment should be used to provide feedback to the learners and to inform planning for teaching. It should not be seen as separate from learning activities taking place during a lesson.
The results of the informal daily assessment tasks are not formally recorded unless the teacher wishes to do so. The results of daily assessment tasks are not taken into account for promotion and certification purposes.
The teacher may choose any of the following as a daily assessment task: a short class test, a discussion, a practical demonstration, a mind map, debate, role-play, an interview, design and make, case study, oral and written presentation.
Informal Homeschool Assessment
In all our Footprints curriculum programmes, including Barefoot Days and Kaalvoetpret, we include regular activities similar to those listed above, which parents can use to informally assess their children’s learning. Observation and conversation are tools that most parents use on a daily basis to find out how their children are getting along with their learning
In Charlotte Mason-style home education, oral narration (telling back) and discussion are used almost on a daily basis to assess learning but also as a tool for developing language and communication skills across the curriculum. Other informal assessment tools that parents may use frequently are:
- informal questioning to see what children know
- drawings or projects done by the children
- parent keeps a written record, journals or diaries
- checklists (such as those provided in our Footprints programmes)
- practical demonstrations by the children
- role-play by children
- children’s art and craft projects reflect their learning
In addition to informal assessment, CAPS describes formal assessment as follows:
FORMAL ASSESSMENT
Formal assessment tasks are marked and formally recorded by the teacher for progression purposes.
Formal assessment provides teachers with a systematic way of evaluating how well learners are progressing in a grade and in a particular subject. Examples of formal assessments include tests, examinations, practical demonstration, projects, design and make, case study and assignments. The forms of assessment used should be age and development level appropriate.
Formal forms of assessment that parents can use for (eclectic) home education are the following:
- assignments
- exams and tests from formal curriculum providers (e.g. maths tests in your maths curriculum)
- standardised tests
- questionnaires
- portfolios
- professional evaluators (teachers, psychologists, etc.)
- past exam papers (usually at high school level)
For subjects like Maths and English, if you use textbook-based programmes, which offer worksheets or regular tests, you can record your children’s scores.
In our Footprints programmes, we do not include school-like tests, with memoranda and marking rubrics, such as those used in the school system.
For subjects such as social studies and life skills, we recommend that you evaluate the projects and assignments that your children complete and only allocate a mark, if scores are required.
You may feel that your mark is subjective or biased, but even a teacher’s mark is likely to be subjective. The purpose of giving a mark or percentage score is to record what you view as your child’s level of mastery of the topic, skill or task in question. You can use this as a benchmark to compare with similar future assignments and see if your child is making progress.
This is YOUR evaluation of your child’s progress, it’s YOUR benchmark.
You know your child and his or her abilities. You are the best person to assess his or her work. You can decide whether or not you share your score with your child or simply discuss his or her work and how it could improve in future, if improvement is necessary.
For example, if your child writes book reviews on a regular basis, which we recommend in our Footprints programmes, you could evaluate and discuss each book review and make suggestions for how to improve on the next one. If you have recorded a score for one of them, in a few weeks you could compare and see if your child is scoring better, according to YOUR criteria for this task. We don’t think scores are needed, but parents who need them can use a scoring system. Refer to the CAPS scoring table in Part 2 – Homeschool Reports.
Remember that any test or any scored assessment is simply a snapshot of your child’s work on a given day, which might be a good one or a bad one! They enable you to give your child feedback about his or her work, his or her diligence and achievement.
In the next article, we’ll look at how you can create useful homeschool reports quickly and easily:
Part 2 – Homeschool Reports
Part 3 – Should I Submit Homeschool Reports?