New Hampshire Homeschool Requirements: As of July 2026 the State Asks You for Nothing, and Four Other People Still Will

Most state homeschool guides describe a set of requirements. This one mostly describes their removal, because New Hampshire deleted almost all of its own ten weeks ago and a great deal of what you will read elsewhere is now wrong. We read the enacted act, the current statutes, the administrative rules as published today, the Department of Education's technical advisory, the athletic association's handbook, the community college system's own eligibility pages, the scholarship organization's parent handbook, and every bill the 2026 session passed or killed. This page is for families in Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Derry, Dover, Rochester, Salem, Merrimack, Hudson, Londonderry and every town in the Granite State.

The short version

• You do not have to tell anyone you are homeschooling. Two exceptions, and only two: you are pulling a child out of a public school, or you want access to public school courses and activities. Otherwise, no notice to the district, no notice to the state.
• There is no subject list. The nine-subject list you will find quoted everywhere was in the old RSA 193-A:4. It is gone. Nothing replaced it.
• There is no portfolio, no records requirement, and no annual evaluation. RSA 193-A:6 was repealed outright.
• The Department of Education no longer administers home education. It says so on its own page: it will no longer accept or retain notifications or issue acknowledgements.
• The rules still say otherwise, and they are still published. Ed 315 is on the General Court's own rules site today, still requiring notification within five business days, a yearly portfolio and an annual evaluation. The act ordered those rules repealed on an expedited basis. We show you exactly where to look.
• The old Department FAQ is still live, still findable by search, and describes the repealed system in detail. If you Google this topic you will probably land on it.
• Public school access is strong and it is written as a duty, not a favor. Courses, clubs, athletics, performing groups, the statewide assessment and the PSAT, under a policy the board may not make more restrictive for you than for its own pupils.
• Your district is paid to let your teenager take a class. A home educated student in a board-approved academic course in grades 7 through 12 counts as an extra 0.15 pupil, per course, in the district's average daily membership. That is a number you can bring to a conversation.
• That same money is the exception to your new privacy right. The statute that keeps your child out of the statewide longitudinal data system has a carve-out for exactly two things: being counted in the district's membership, and sitting the statewide assessment.
• Sports are open, and they run on a marking-period academic record New Hampshire law never asks you to keep. Four units of work per grading period, reviewed by a principal every marking period, recorded on a transcript the member school has to maintain.
• Free college credit reaches home school students at 15. Two courses a year at no tuition, with one registration step that costs half a course's tuition if you skip it.
• The Education Freedom Account is the trade. Roughly the state's per-pupil grant, in exchange for a signed agreement to teach a named subject list and file an annual record of educational attainment by July 15. Those are the exact requirements the state just deleted. Taking the money ends your home education program as a matter of law.
• The EFA hit its enrollment cap for 2026-2027 on August 13, 2026, with 943 students on the waitlist. Which side of that line you are on depends on a priority list, and the Department's own page describes the eligibility rule incorrectly.
• One optional piece of paper matters more than anything else on this page. The state will still countersign a certificate of completion you write. The flagship university's enrollment checklist names that exact document.

What happened on July 1, 2026

House Bill 1268 of the 2026 session is chaptered as 2026 New Hampshire Laws chapter 297. Its first section gives it a name, the Home Education Freedom Act. The Governor approved it on July 10, 2026 and its home education sections took effect on July 1, 2026, nine days earlier. The Department of Education states both of those dates in its own technical advisory, and we print both because you will see them side by side and wonder.

Here is what the act did, section by section, in its own words. Section 297:3:

RSA 193-A:1-5 is repealed and reenacted to read as follows

Section 297:10:

The following are repealed: I. RSA 193-A:6, relative to the record keeping and evaluation of home education programs. II. RSA 193-A:10, relative to the home education advisory council. III. RSA 193-A:11, relative to the authority of school district officials in governance of home education programs.

And section 297:9, which is the one almost nobody has noticed:

Immediately upon passage of this act, the state board of education shall undertake and complete expedited repeal of rules Ed 315, as described in RSA 541-A:19-a.

The House passed it 174 to 166. It was amended in the Senate, and the Senate divided the question so that the home education sections were voted separately from the rest of the bill; those sections passed 14 to 8. The House then concurred 178 to 170. Those are not landslide numbers, and that matters for the last section of this page.

The entire law, and you can read it in five minutes

New Hampshire homeschool law is now RSA 193-A, sections 1 through 5 and section 9. Section 2 states the premise:

The general court recognizes that the right of a parent to direct the education of their child is a natural right. A parent may elect to educate his or her own child at home in accordance with this chapter.

Section 3 is the whole of the filing requirement:

A declaration of home education shall not be required, except to obtain access to public school programs pursuant to RSA 193:1-c or upon withdrawal from a public school.

Section 4, subsection II, is the limit on everybody else:

The resident district superintendent shall work with parents upon request in meeting the goals of their home education program. No superintendent, school board, school principal, other school district official, local official, or state official shall propose, adopt, or enforce any policy or procedure governing home educated students except for policies related to the courses and programs described in RSA 193:1-c.

Subsection III settles the calendar question, and remember this sentence, because the athletic association does not:

Dates and hours of instruction shall not be required to coincide with the resident district calendar. The academic term of a home education program shall not be required to coincide with the resident district academic year.

Subsection V is the one that will matter most to a family that has ever been afraid of a knock on the door. It begins by saying participation in a home education program is presumed to be education required by law, and then bars the state, in child protection proceedings under RSA 169-C, from three specific things. The third:

Use the lack of notice, records, evaluations, or assessments in a home education program operated consistent with this chapter as a failure to provide education as required by law.

The same act amended the definition of a neglected child in RSA 169-C:3, XIX to add a sentence of its own:

A child participating in a home education program under RSA 193-A or an education program funded through an education freedom account under RSA 194-F shall not be considered a neglected child under this chapter solely on the basis of such participation.

And subsection VI is a confidentiality rule with teeth:

Any information submitted to any state agency, school district, or government entity regarding a home education program shall be confidential and shall not be disclosed to any other state agency, federal agency, or third party without the written consent of the parent. Such disclosure by a government employee acting in an official capacity, shall constitute a violation of RSA 91-A:8, IV.

That is the law. There is no subject list, no day count, no hour count, no parent qualification, no curriculum approval, no test, no portfolio, no evaluation and no annual anything.

Compulsory attendance, which did not change

RSA 193:1, I still requires a parent of a child at least 6 and under 18 to send the child to the assigned public school, and subparagraph (b) still exempts a child receiving home education under RSA 193-A. Subsection II is the one families miss:

A child who reaches the sixth birthday after September 30 shall not be required to attend school under the provisions of this section until the following school year.

The same statute lists the ways out at the top end. One of them, at subparagraph (f)(2), is documenting completion of a home school program at the high school level by submitting a certificate or letter to the department of education. Hold on to that. It comes back near the end of this page and it is the most useful sentence here.

The two filings that survive, and how to do them

One: you are pulling a child out of a public school. RSA 193-A:3 requires a declaration of home education on withdrawal. A declaration is defined in RSA 193-A:1, III as an optional written statement that the student is home educated and meets New Hampshire compulsory attendance requirements, signed by a parent, identifying the student by name, date of birth and current address. That is the whole content. Name, date of birth, address, your signature, a sentence. Send it to the superintendent, keep a copy, and note the date you sent it.

Two: you want access to district courses or activities. Same document, same content, sent to the resident district. The Department's technical advisory puts it plainly:

Under the new law, notification is only required if a student is being withdrawn from public school or when the family seeks access to public school courses, activities, or co-curricular programs under RSA 193:1-c. Consequently, for students who are not accessing any local school district programs, no notification will be required.

That is it. There is no state form any more, because the state is not collecting anything. The Department's home education page says so directly:

Effective with the HB 1268 statutory changes, notifications for both commencement and termination of Home Education programs are no longer required. Accordingly, NHED will no longer accept or retain home education notifications or issue acknowledgements of receipt.

Do write the declaration even when you are not required to, and keep it. It costs nothing, it is the only dated artifact your program will ever generate, and later in this page you will meet three separate offices that ask a New Hampshire homeschooling family to prove something about years already past.

The rules still say you owe a portfolio. Here is why, and what to do about it

This is the part of New Hampshire's situation that no other guide is telling you, and it is the reason to read a date line before you trust a page.

Part Ed 315, HOME EDUCATION, is published in full today in the New Hampshire Code of Administrative Rules at the General Court's own rules site. We read it on September 16, 2026. Ed 315.05(c):

A parent shall notify the selected participating agency in writing within 5 business days of commencing a home education program.

Ed 315.07(a):

In accordance with RSA 193-A:6, the parent shall keep a portfolio each year the child is being home educated.

Ed 315.08(a):

The parent shall provide for an annual evaluation for a child that meets the requirements of the options enumerated in RSA 193-A:6, II.

Ed 315.09 is titled The Home Education Advisory Council.

Every one of those rules rests on a statute that no longer exists. RSA 193-A:6 was repealed by section 297:10, I. The advisory council was repealed by section 297:10, II. RSA 193-A:5, which Ed 315.05 cites for the notification, was repealed and reenacted as the optional certificate of completion section and now says nothing about notifying anybody.

The Department is aware. Its technical advisory, issued September 2, 2026, answers the portfolio question this way:

No. HB 1268 eliminated mandatory portfolios, evaluation requirements, and recordkeeping. The State Board of Education is undertaking an expedited repeal of the former Ed 315 rules that imposed these requirements.

We are not going to tell you that an unrepealed rule with no statutory authority behind it is unenforceable, because that is a legal conclusion and it is not ours to draw. What we will tell you is what is true and checkable: the Legislature ordered those rules repealed immediately upon passage, the Department says the repeal is under way, and as of this page's publication date the text is still up. If anyone points you at Ed 315, point them at section 297:9 of chapter 297 and at the Department's advisory, and ask the Department's Office of Home Education in writing. The address is on their page. Keep the reply.

And the old FAQ is still the first thing a search will hand you

The Department's older Home Education Program FAQs for Parents and Students is still live at its old address and still ranks in search. It tells you to notify a participating agency within five business days, describes Ed 315 as the governing rules, explains the Home Education Advisory Council, and says a parent must provide an annual evaluation which may consist of a portfolio review, an interview, or testing administered by a participating agency. It also tells you to notify the participating agency in writing within 15 days if you terminate the program.

None of that is the law today. The document is not linked from the Department's current home education page, and the current page links the September 2 technical advisory instead. Before you act on any New Hampshire homeschool page, including this one, look for a date on it, and then check whether it was written before or after July 1, 2026.

What your district owes you, and what it gets paid

RSA 193:1-c is one of the better public school access statutes in the country, and the 2026 session touched it twice. Chapter 183 of 2026, House Bill 1817, approved June 19, 2026 and effective August 18, 2026, added education freedom account pupils to it and split one sentence into two. The operative text today, at subsection I:

Nonpublic, public chartered school, education freedom account, or home educated pupils shall have access to curricular courses and cocurricular programs offered by the school district in which the pupil resides, including the statewide assessment and preliminary scholastic aptitude test (PSAT). The local school board shall adopt a policy regulating participation in curricular courses and cocurricular programs. Such policy shall not be more restrictive for non-public, public chartered school, education freedom account, or home educated pupils than the policy governing the school district's resident pupils.

The same section then defines the word cocurricular, and the definition is wide. In the statute's words, it includes:

those activities which are designed to supplement and enrich regular academic programs of study, provide opportunities for social development, and encourage participation in clubs, athletics, performing groups, and service to school and community.

Read those three sentences in order, because the structure is the point. Access is stated as a right. The board must adopt a policy. The policy may not be stricter for your child than for the child down the street. And subsection II adds the sentence that closes the back door:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to require a parent to establish a home education program which exceeds the requirements of RSA 193:1 or RSA 193-A.

As of July 1, 2026 the requirements of RSA 193-A are essentially nothing. So a district policy that conditions course access on a portfolio, an evaluation, a test score or a curriculum review is asking you to exceed RSA 193-A, and subsection II says that cannot be required. The Department's advisory reaches the same conclusion in its own words, saying districts may only enforce policies on home educated students that are consistent with the same policies and procedures required of regularly enrolled district students.

The number to bring to that conversation

Every argument about part-time access comes down to money, and New Hampshire already answered it. RSA 198:38, I(b), the definition of average daily membership in attendance for adequacy aid:

For the purpose of calculating ADMA, each pupil who is home educated in compliance with RSA 193-A and who is enrolled in a school board approved public school academic course in grades 7 through 12 shall count as an additional 0.15 pupil for each such academic course taken in a public school.

Subsection I-a(b) says the identical thing for average daily membership in residence. The Department's technical advisory states the consequence plainly:

Yes. The state continues to count home-educated students who take individualized courses in grades 7 through 12 in the district's average daily membership (ADM) for adequacy aid, at 0.15 ADM per course, under RSA 198:38 through RSA 198:42. HB 1268 does not change that.

What is 0.15 worth? RSA 198:40-a, II(a) sets a base cost of $4,100 per pupil in the ADMR, plus differentiated aid of $2,300 for a pupil eligible for a free or reduced price meal, $800 for an English language learner and $2,100 for a pupil receiving special education services. RSA 198:40-d then requires the Department, beginning July 1, 2026 and every year after, to adjust those per pupil costs upward by 2 percent annually, rounded up to the nearest whole dollar. We are not going to print a current-year figure we could not open. Against the statutory base alone, 0.15 of $4,100 is $615 per course, and the adjusted figure is higher. Ask your district's business administrator what the current base rate is and do the arithmetic in front of them. It is a small number to a district budget and it is not zero, and the conversation goes differently when the parent has done the math.

Two honest limits, both from the same advisory. First:

Local school districts, however, do not receive adequacy aid for home-educated students who only participate in co-curricular or extracurricular activities.

Second, on fees:

Home-educated students may be charged a fee for these activities if regularly enrolled students of the district are charged the same fee for the activities.

So the money argument works for academic courses in grades 7 through 12, and it does not work for the marching band. For activities, the argument is the statute, and the fee rule is the same one that applies to everyone else's child.

The privacy clause and the money clause are the same sentence

This is the finding on this page we most want a New Hampshire parent to see, because it is a decision and almost nobody knows they are making it.

RSA 193-A:4, IV opens like this:

Except in the circumstance where a student is included in the resident district's average daily membership in attendance or ADMA pursuant to RSA 198:38 or by participating in the statewide assessment, the home educated child shall not:

and then bars two things: having their data tracked through the statewide longitudinal data system as defined by RSA 189:65, and having their student information collected under RSA 193-E:5, the unique pupil identification statute.

Now read the exception against the section above. Being included in the district's ADMA under RSA 198:38 is precisely what happens when your seventh grader takes one board-approved academic course. The statewide assessment is one of the things RSA 193:1-c gives you access to. The two doors the Legislature opened for you are the two doors that take your child out of the data exclusion.

We are not telling you which side of that to choose. A free chemistry lab, a district orchestra seat, or a real standardized score in a state that will otherwise never generate one are all worth something. So is a child who is not in a state longitudinal database. What we are telling you is that the same act gave you both and wrote the exception around the funding mechanism, and that a family should make that trade on purpose rather than discover it.

One related provision worth knowing, at RSA 193-E:5, I(p): a New Hampshire home educated pupil pursuing an education at a postsecondary institution who has not been assigned a unique pupil identifier may, in the statute's words, without penalty, opt out of being included in the unique pupil identification system for postsecondary pupils. If your teenager does dual credit at a community college, that opt-out exists and it is written into the statute with the words without penalty in it.

Sports: the door is open, and the price is a record New Hampshire never asks you to keep

New Hampshire high school athletics run through the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association. By-Law Article II governs eligibility, and Section 13 is written for charter, home educated and non-public students. The association's own words:

The NHIAA shall declare home-educated students to be immediately eligible to try out for a team(s) to participate in interscholastic athletics if the following conditions are met

Eleven conditions follow. The useful ones, in plain language. You must meet all policies adopted by the local school board. Your parent submits a written request to the principal of the member school. Your child may represent a charter school, a non-public school or a public school in the district where they reside, and must be living with the parents or legal guardians in the family residence. The principal must be satisfied there was no recruitment. The principal certifies eligibility to the association on the Non-Public and Home Educated Student Application. And a home educated student may represent only one school in an academic year.

That is a genuinely open door, and it is broader than most states, because it includes non-public and charter schools and not only the assigned public high school.

Then read conditions 7 and 8

The Scholastic Standing Rule must be reviewed by the principal for each marking period the student athlete wishes to participate and recorded on the official transcript held by the school where the athlete participates.

The NHIAA member school must maintain a transcript of the student's academic record as well as other relevant Eligibility Rules

The Scholastic Standing Rule is By-Law Article II, Section 2. Its operative sentence:

A minimum of four (4) units of work per grading period is required for participation in interscholastic athletics.

The rule defines its own terms. A grading period is not less than six weeks. The previous grading period is the last prior grading quarter of the school year, not semester grades. A passing grade is as determined by the individual member high schools. Incompletes are not passing grades. And there is a footnote that decides the whole question for a homeschooling family:

This is interpreted as the school's previous grading period, not the student's previous grading period.

Set that against RSA 193-A:4, III, which says your dates and hours of instruction are not required to coincide with the resident district calendar. State law says your school year is your own. The association measures your child against the high school's quarters. Those two are not in conflict as a matter of law, because one is a statute about your program and the other is a private association's rule about its own competitions, but they land on the same family in August, and a family that took the statute at its word can arrive with nothing a principal can convert into four passing units of work for a quarter that ended in June.

So here is the practical instruction, and it is the single most expensive thing on this page to get wrong. If there is any chance your child will want to play, start issuing grades on the local high school's calendar, in the ninth grade year at the latest, and talk to the principal in writing before the season. You cannot reconstruct a marking period that never happened. Ask the principal three things and keep the answers: what the school's grading periods are, what the school will accept as evidence of four passing units of work from a home education program, and who reviews it.

One more thing you should know before you need it. The association's own handbook page links By-Law Article V, Due Process, and that link is broken. We tried it with a plain fetch and in a real browser; it resolves to nothing. Article V is exactly the document a family needs when a principal will not certify a student. Ask the NHIAA office directly for it rather than hunting the site.

Free college credit, starting at 15

New Hampshire's dual credit architecture sits in RSA 188-E:25 through 188-E:29 and is run by the Community College System of New Hampshire. It distinguishes two things, and the words are terms of art. Concurrent enrollment means courses taught at the high school by high school teachers approved by CCSNH. Dual enrollment means college courses taught by CCSNH instructors. RSA 188-E:26 offers participation to high school and career technical education center students in grades 10 through 12.

RSA 188-E:27, III(a) is the funding sentence:

The state shall pay the current rate of concurrent enrollment tuition, which is established at $150 per course, to the CCSNH institution where a high school, career and technical education, or non-residential nonpublic high school student enrolls in the concurrent enrollment course.

Subparagraph (b) does the same for dual enrollment at one-half the regular cost of the course, and says CCSNH shall accept that amount as full payment for course tuition. Subsection II caps state funding at four courses per year in each of grades 10, 11 and 12, subject to CCSNH policy, and says a student may take more at their own expense. Chapter 31 of 2026, House Bill 1202, approved April 22, 2026 and effective June 21, 2026, deleted the old four-credit-per-course limit from that subsection.

Notice what the statutory funding sentence does not say. It names a high school student, a career and technical education student, and a non-residential nonpublic high school student. It does not name a home educated student, and in New Hampshire a home educated student is not a nonpublic school student; the two are separate pathways in separate chapters. Read the statute alone and you would conclude the funded program is closed to your child.

It is not, and the reason is that the system that runs the program said so itself. CCSNH's Early College Online eligibility page, which is the successor to what everyone still calls eStart, lists the requirements and then adds:

Home School students age 15 or older are eligible.

The full list is: a New Hampshire resident, a current high school student, a sophomore, junior or senior, with home school students age 15 or older eligible, and courses completed before the twenty-first birthday. The page adds that waivers for students who do not meet those requirements can be reviewed case by case, and that high school credit can only be awarded if the courses are completed before a high school diploma is awarded.

On price, CCSNH publishes this:

Thanks to a program through the State of NH and the Community College System of NH, eligible high school students taking dual or concurrent credit courses (courses that earn both high school and college credit) through Early College At Your High School (formerly Running Start), Early College Online (formerly eStart) and Early College On a College Campus (formerly Early College) can take up to 2 courses per academic year for free.

Two courses a year, no tuition. Note the gap between that and the statute, which caps funding at four: the statute sets a ceiling and the system currently funds two, subject to available funding, and CCSNH's own footnote says as much. If you want a third course, ask what it costs at the Early College discounted rate before you assume it is full price.

The one step that costs money if you skip it

This is on CCSNH's eligibility page and we have not seen it in any homeschool guide:

Account information is required by VLACS and the NH Department of Education to ensure proper funding. Students who do not create a VLACS account will not receive high school credit for their Early College Online course and will be charged half the tuition of a Community College System of New Hampshire (CCSNH) college course.

VLACS is the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School. The account is free and it exists so the funding can be attributed. Skip it and you pay half tuition and get no high school credit. If you already have a VLACS account, the page says you do not need a new one. Create the account before you register, not after.

And the other route, which your district is paid to give you

Early College At Your High School is the concurrent enrollment version: a college course taught inside the high school, on the high school's daily schedule, by a teacher credentialed by the college. That is a district curricular course. RSA 193:1-c gives your child access to district curricular courses. And RSA 198:38, I(b) pays your district 0.15 ADM for a home educated student in a board-approved academic course in grades 7 through 12. So the access right, the funding provision and the course all line up, and a family that asks for a named concurrent enrollment course by name is having a different conversation than one that asks for general access. Ask your district's Early College coordinator, and ask in writing.

One broken link to flag here too, for the same reason as the NHIAA one. CCSNH's own scholarships page carries a Learn more link for the Dual and Concurrent Enrollment Scholarship, and that link is a 404. A second pointer, dualnh.com, redirects to a general transfer page rather than to the scholarship. Go through your college's Early College coordinator instead of the website.

The money, and the trade nobody explains

New Hampshire has two funding programs a homeschooling family can reach, and one of them costs you the deregulation you just read about.

The Education Freedom Account, in the statute's own words

RSA 194-F:2, I:

The commissioner of the department of education shall transfer to the scholarship organization the per pupil adequate education grant amount under RSA 198:40-a, plus any differentiated aid that would have been provided to a public school for that eligible student.

That is the base cost of an adequate education, currently $4,100 per pupil in statute and adjusted upward 2 percent annually from July 1, 2026 under RSA 198:40-d, plus $2,300, $800 or $2,100 where the differentiated aid categories apply. The Children's Scholarship Fund, which administers the program, published an average grant of about $4,800 in its own November 2025 fact sheet. Check the Department's current figure for your year rather than relying on either number.

RSA 194-F:2, II lists fifteen categories of qualifying expense, from (a) through (o): private school tuition and fees, non-public online learning programs, tutoring, services contracted from a district public school or chartered public school, textbooks and curriculum, computer hardware and internet connectivity, educational software, school uniforms, test and exam fees, summer and specialized programs, career or technical school costs, educational therapies, tuition and fees at an institution of higher education, fee-for-service transportation to an education service provider, and any other educational expense approved by the scholarship organization.

Now the trade

RSA 193-A:1, IV defines a home educated student and then adds one sentence:

This definition shall not include a student participating in the education freedom account program established in RSA 194-F.

RSA 193-A:4, VII:

A home education program is terminated when a home educated student is enrolled full time in a public school, a public charter school, a nonpublic school, or the education freedom account program established in RSA 194-F.

So taking the money is not a homeschooling family receiving a grant. It is a homeschooling family leaving RSA 193-A. And what RSA 194-F asks in return is, almost word for word, the regime the Home Education Freedom Act just deleted.

RSA 194-F:3, III(d) requires the parent to sign an agreement with the scholarship organization. Subparagraph (1):

To provide an education for the eligible student in the core knowledge domains that include science, mathematics, language, government, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, the history of the constitutions of New Hampshire and the United States, and an exposure to and appreciation of art and music.

That is the subject list that used to be in RSA 193-A:4 and is no longer there. It did not disappear from New Hampshire law. It moved to the funding statute.

Subparagraph (3) requires the parent to provide an annual record of educational attainment by one of three methods: a nationally standardized, norm-referenced achievement test with the results provided to the scholarship organization; the statewide assessment under RSA 193-C:6; or, at (C):

Maintaining a portfolio including, but not limited to, a log which designates by title the reading materials used; samples of writings, worksheets, workbooks, or creative materials used or developed by the student. The parent shall have a certified teacher or a teacher currently teaching in a nonpublic school, who is selected by the parent, evaluate the student's educational progress upon review of a portfolio and discussion with the parent or student.

Compare that with repealed RSA 193-A:6, II, the section the old Department FAQ still describes: a portfolio review, an interview, or testing. Same idea, same three shapes, now attached to the money instead of to the law.

Subparagraph (2) adds a condition the old law never had: the parent agrees not to enroll the student as a full-time student in their resident district public school while participating.

The side by side, because this is the actual decision

• Notice. RSA 193-A: none, unless withdrawing from public school or seeking district access. EFA: a full application with verified supporting documents, and if you are accessing district programs under RSA 193:1-c, a notice to the resident district that the student is now an EFA participant.
• Subjects. RSA 193-A: no list. EFA: a named list you sign for.
• Records and assessment. RSA 193-A: none. EFA: an annual record of educational attainment, by July 15 every year.
• District funding for a course your child takes. RSA 193-A: 0.15 ADM per academic course in grades 7 through 12. EFA: none. The Department's advisory is explicit that an EFA student is not counted in the resident district's ADM and the district receives no adequacy aid for that student even if the student enrolls in a district course or an activity, because the adequacy grant went to the EFA instead.
• Data. RSA 193-A: excluded from the statewide longitudinal data system and the unique pupil identification system, with the two exceptions above. EFA: the unique pupil identification statute names scholarship organizations throughout as entities that request and maintain identifiers.
• Money. RSA 193-A: nothing. EFA: roughly the state per pupil grant plus differentiated aid.

Neither column is the right answer. For a family that would spend the grant on a curriculum, a tutor and a co-op, a test once a year is a small price and the trade is obviously worth it. For a family whose whole reason for homeschooling is that they want to be left alone, New Hampshire just handed them exactly that and the money would take it back. The reason we lay it out is that the two programs are described in completely different documents by completely different organizations, and nobody puts them in one table.

Where the line is standing right now, and it moved five weeks ago

On August 13, 2026 the Children's Scholarship Fund announced that the program had reached its enrollment cap:

New Hampshire's Education Freedom Account (EFA) program has reached its current enrollment cap of 12,500 students for the 2026-2027 school year

The release reports 13,443 eligible students and 943 on the waitlist, and explains that the cap rose from 10,000 to 12,500 by the statutory growth mechanism after the previous cap filled. That mechanism is RSA 194-F:3, I-a: when prior year enrollment exceeds 90 percent of the prior year's cap, the cap increases once by 25 percent.

The cap is not the end of the story, and this is the part a family needs:

Under state law, students in statutory priority groups are exempt from the enrollment cap and may still enroll, while other eligible applicants may be placed on the waitlist.

RSA 194-F:1, XIII sets that priority list in order: a student currently enrolled in the EFA program; a sibling of one; a child with disabilities as defined by RSA 186-C:2; and a student whose family income is less than or equal to 350 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. RSA 194-F:3, I says priority guideline students are not subject to the cap and are enrolled on a rolling basis.

The dates, which are a schedule and not a deadline

The Children's Scholarship Fund's parent handbook and its EFA page state the mechanics. Applications are rolling. To receive a 100 percent grant, your completed application and supporting materials must be complete and verified by July 15 of the given year. Families may apply through February for a prorated grant for the current school year. Families are encouraged to submit documents by July 1 to allow time for verification before the July 15 date.

And for returning families, July 15 is a hard edge:

If a participating parent fails to provide a child's annual record of educational attainment to CSF by July 15th, CSF shall not make any additional EFA funds available to the EFA student until the annual record of educational attainment is provided.

Two details from the same handbook that families get wrong. The portfolio evaluation letter must come from a certified teacher or a teacher currently teaching in a nonpublic school, and the handbook says a parent or guardian may not sign a portfolio evaluation letter for their own child, even where the parent is a certified teacher. And the report-card alternative to a portfolio evaluation is available only to a student attending a public school outside the resident district or a nonpublic school full-time; the handbook says it is not available to part-time students.

Also worth knowing, because it trips people up: qualifying for differentiated aid is a different test from qualifying for the priority group. Differentiated aid for a disability uses the definition at 34 CFR 300.8. The cap-exemption priority group uses RSA 186-C:2. The handbook flags the difference itself.

The other program: the Education Tax Credit scholarship

RSA 77-G is a separate, smaller, income-tested program, and unlike the EFA it does not end your home education program. RSA 77-G:2, I(a) says it in one sentence:

A home education student may also receive a scholarship to cover educational expenses.

Eligibility under RSA 77-G:1, VIII requires a New Hampshire resident at least 5 and no more than 20 years of age who has not graduated from high school, and whose annual household income is less than or equal to 300 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. The scholarship organization verifies the income.

Read the expense definition before you plan around it. RSA 77-G:1, VI covers tuition at a public or nonpublic school, the cost of college or university, an accredited tutor or tutoring facility, or a distance education program, and then excludes:

Educational expenses shall not include fees or expenses related to participation in athletic programs, transportation expenses, or the cost of a parent's time expended in the home schooling of his or her child.

For a home educated student the proof mechanism is different too. RSA 77-G:1, XIII defines the receipt for a home educated student as a document issued by the parent to the scholarship organization, containing the parent's name and address, the student's name and address, and the name of the payee with the date and amount paid. Keep vendor receipts from day one. You are the one who issues the document.

A bill in the 2026 session, House Bill 1803, would have made an Education Tax Credit scholarship recipient ineligible for EFA funds in the same program year. It was found inexpedient to legislate. As of today the two are not mutually exclusive by statute, and you should confirm the current position with the scholarship organization before assuming anything about combining them.

Special education, and a rule that says something surprising

Three separate things are true and they do not fit on one line.

Child Find reaches you. The federal obligation to identify, locate and evaluate children who may have a disability applies to home educated children, and the Department's own home education page says so and links the New Hampshire Child Find rules. If you think your child may need an evaluation, the resident district is the door.

Access continues to 21. RSA 193:1-c, I says that for purposes of access under that section, a home educated pupil includes any pupil who is a child with a disability under RSA 186-C:2, I, until such time as such pupil has acquired a high school diploma or reached age 21 inclusive. For a family with an older teenager with a disability, that extension is the most valuable sentence in the access statute.

And a rule puts you outside the private school services scheme. Ed 1112.03, in the New Hampshire special education rules:

Children with disabilities who are receiving home education under RSA 193-A shall not be considered to be children attending a private school.

The federal equitable-services provisions at 34 CFR 300.130 through 300.144 are written for children with disabilities enrolled by their parents in private schools. New Hampshire's rule says a home educated child is not in that category. We are not going to tell you what services you can or cannot obtain, because that depends on your district, your child and a body of law that deserves a lawyer rather than a blog post. We are telling you the rule exists, it is short, and you should read it before a meeting rather than during one.

One footnote on that chapter, in the same family as Ed 315. The special education rules define home education as home education as defined in RSA 193-A:4, and RSA 193-A:4 no longer contains a definition of home education; it is now the parental rights and privacy section. Two separate rule chapters are now pointing at statute text that the Home Education Freedom Act moved.

The one piece of paper only you can produce

New Hampshire issues no diploma for home education. What it issues, on request, is a countersigned certificate. RSA 193-A:5 says a parent may certify completion of a home education program, lists what the certificate may contain, and then, at subsection II:

If a parent submits the certificate of completion to the commissioner of the department of education, within 30 days of receipt the commissioner shall issue a certificate of completion which shall include the home education student has completed a home education program in the state of New Hampshire pursuant to RSA 193-A.

The word shall is doing real work there, and so is the thirty days. The statute calls the certificate optional, and in one sense it is: nothing forces you to produce it. Now read what the University of New Hampshire asks of a homeschooled applicant who decides to enroll:

If you choose to enroll at UNH, you will need to provide documentation of successful completion of your secondary level studies in the form of a final transcript, a General Equivalency Diploma (GED), HiSET, or a certificate of completion from your local school district or state board of education.

UNH's admissions criteria for homeschooled students, in its own words, are the same as for students who receive a diploma through a public school system or a traditional private secondary school, and homeschooled students are eligible for its test-optional program. The friction is not admission. It is the enrollment documentation, and New Hampshire's optional certificate is the closest thing the state produces to the item on that list.

It is not a perfect match and we will not pretend otherwise. UNH names a certificate from a local school district or state board of education; New Hampshire's certificate is countersigned by the commissioner of the department of education. Close, and not identical. So do both things: request the certificate, and ask UNH admissions in writing whether it satisfies their enrollment documentation, then keep the reply. UNH's own page invites exactly that, saying that if your homeschool program does not provide a diploma you should contact them to establish what documentation they will require.

And there is a third use for the same act. RSA 193:1, I(f)(2) lists, among the ways a pupil is excused from compulsory attendance, documenting the completion of a home school program at the high school level by submitting a certificate or letter to the department of education. One filing, three payoffs.

Federal student aid, which New Hampshire has already solved for you

The Department publishes a one-page Self-Certification of Secondary School Completion. It quotes the Federal Student Aid Handbook:

You may rely on a homeschooled student's self-certification that they completed secondary school in a homeschool setting.

and the form itself is one sentence your graduate signs:

I certify that I have completed secondary school through Home Education as defined by New Hampshire law, RSA 193-A.

Note the phrase the federal rule turns on, as the Department quotes it: a homeschooled student is eligible for Title IV funds if their secondary school education was in a homeschool that state law treats as a home or private school. Deregulation did not break that. RSA 193-A still exists, RSA 193:1, I(b) still exempts a child receiving home education under it, and the Department still publishes the form. A New Hampshire family whose program now requires nothing is still a family whose program state law recognizes.

Two federal questions that both turn on your state, and we will answer one of them

Enlistment. Department of Defense Instruction 1304.26 describes a high school diploma as desirable although not mandatory and sends the question of enlistment priority to Instruction 1145.01, whose glossary places in Tier 1, the highest priority category, high school diploma graduates, holders of college credit, and covered graduates as defined by statute. That statute is section 532 of Public Law 112-81, set out in the notes to 10 U.S.C. 503 and titled Equal Treatment for Secondary School Graduates. It defines a covered graduate to include a person who:

otherwise completes a program of secondary education in compliance with the education laws of the State in which the person resides

In New Hampshire, as of July 1, 2026, compliance with the state's education laws for a homeschooling family means a declaration on withdrawal from public school, if there was one, and otherwise nothing at all. That is an unusual position and we are not going to pretend to know how a recruiting station handles it. What the statute settles is the tier. What it does not settle is what any given station accepts as proof. Ask a recruiter, in writing, years before you need the answer, and ask specifically whether the commissioner's certificate of completion under RSA 193-A:5 is accepted.

529 plans. You will read that 529 money now covers homeschool expenses. Read the scoping sentence before you believe it. The expanded list at 26 U.S.C. 529(c)(7) does name the expenses a homeschooling family incurs, but the whole subsection is scoped to expenses in connection with enrollment or attendance at, or for students enrolled at or attending, an elementary or secondary public, private, or religious school. The word homeschool does not appear in section 529, and section 530(b)(3)(B) defines a school as one providing elementary or secondary education as determined under State law. New Hampshire, in RSA 193-A and RSA 193:1, treats home education as a pathway distinct from a nonpublic school.

We are not going to answer that one, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does. We sell an online teacher. An answer to a tax question from a company that profits from the answer is worth nothing. Take those two provisions to the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration and to your own tax preparer, ask in writing, and keep the reply.

Driver's licence, which is a genuine gap

RSA 263:19, I lets a driver's license be issued to a person 16 or older and under 18 who presents a certificate of successful completion of a driver education course, and it names exactly two sources: a course given by a public or nonpublic secondary school and approved by the department of education in cooperation with the department of safety, or a course given by a motor vehicle drivers' school licensed under that chapter. A home education program is neither one. The course itself is not small: not less than 30 hours of classroom instruction, not less than 10 hours behind the wheel and not less than 6 hours of observation, with no more than 15 classroom hours satisfied online.

So a New Hampshire homeschooling parent cannot certify driver education. Two routes exist. Pay a licensed commercial driving school, which is what most families do. Or ask the district whether its driver education course is available under RSA 193:1-c as a curricular course, because that is a question the access statute plausibly reaches and nobody seems to have asked it. Ask in writing, and ask before the summer your child turns 16. RSA 263:21 also allows the director to permit a limited school-use license where no readily available transportation exists and the course requirement would cause undue hardship, which is narrow but real.

What the Legislature actually did in 2026, and what it tried

We read the General Court's own legislative data for the entire 2025-2026 biennium, every bill in the session with its chapter number and the disposition in each chamber. Twenty-nine bills touched home education, education freedom accounts, curricular access or related scholarships. Four became law.

• Chapter 297, HB 1268, the Home Education Freedom Act. Everything above. House 174 to 166; Senate 14 to 8 on the home education sections after the question was divided; House concurrence 178 to 170.
• Chapter 183, HB 1817. Added education freedom account pupils to RSA 193:1-c and restructured its policy sentence. Effective August 18, 2026.
• Chapter 31, HB 1202. Removed the four-credit-per-course limit from the dual and concurrent enrollment funding subsection. Effective June 21, 2026.
• Chapter 256, SB 491. Requires the scholarship organization, with the Department, to make information about career and technical education classes available to EFA students in grades 9 through 12.

And the ones that did not, because a dead bill is a live signal:

• HB 1521, clarifying the definition of home education, found inexpedient to legislate on a unanimous 17 to 0 committee report, adopted by the House on March 11, 2026.
• HB 1490, which would have required scholarship organizations to tell parents about a termination-notice duty, also killed 17 to 0.
• HB 1155, repealing the home education advisory council, passed the House 180 to 156 and was sent to interim study by the Senate 5 to 0 on May 7, 2026. The council was then repealed anyway, by section 297:10, II of the larger bill on the same day's calendar.
• HB 1716, relative to the academic accountability of education freedom accounts, killed on a 10 to 8 majority report and a 194 to 166 floor vote.
• SB 581, which would have removed the EFA priority guidelines and the enrollment cap, referred to interim study 6 to 0 on March 5, 2026. HB 1834, on the enrollment cap, was laid on the table 180 to 157 and died there when the session ended on August 19, 2026.
• HB 1512, which would have let municipalities vote to prevent their residents from receiving EFA funds, found inexpedient to legislate.

Take the counterweight seriously. The Home Education Freedom Act passed the House by eight votes and won concurrence by eight. Two separate bills to change the EFA cap are sitting in interim study rather than dead. New Hampshire runs two-year legislatures, and a bill parked in year two comes back in year one of the next one. Before you build a school year or a budget around anything on this page, spend two minutes in the General Court's bill status database, and read the currency line on whatever statute page you land on.

Small things New Hampshire families ask

Do I have to teach specific subjects? Not under RSA 193-A any more. You do if you take an EFA, because you sign for the list.

Do I have to count days or hours? No. There is no day count and no hour count in New Hampshire homeschool law, and there never was an hour count.

Do I need a teaching certificate or a diploma myself? No. There is no parent qualification of any kind.

Can the superintendent require anything of me? RSA 193-A:4, II says no state or local official may propose, adopt or enforce any policy or procedure governing home educated students, except policies related to the courses and programs described in RSA 193:1-c. The same subsection says the superintendent shall work with parents upon request in meeting the goals of their home education program. That is a support obligation, not a supervision one.

What if we move to a different New Hampshire district? Nothing is required, unless you are accessing programs in the new district or withdrawing a child from a public school there.

What if my child goes back to public school? The Department's page points to Ed 306.23(j), under which the principal evaluates the student's prior educational experiences to determine progress toward required competencies, and to Ed 306.04(b)(19) for awarding high school credit based on competency achievement. The Department's advice is to consult the principal and the local school board. This is the single best reason to keep a record of what you taught even though nobody can demand one. A principal deciding what nine years of work was worth in credits is easier to talk to when there is something to look at.

Can my child sit the statewide test or the PSAT? Yes. RSA 193:1-c names both. Read the data section above first; the statewide assessment is one of the two exceptions to the data exclusion.

Who do I actually talk to? The Department lists a named person on its home education page: Alyson Landrigan, Bureau of Educational Opportunities, at homeeducation@doe.nh.gov, phone (603) 805-9581. The EFA and the Education Tax Credit scholarship both run through the Children's Scholarship Fund New Hampshire in Concord at csfnh@scholarshipfund.org. Named humans answer questions that web pages do not.

What this actually means for your week

New Hampshire now asks a homeschooling family for less than almost any state in the country. If you are starting fresh, with a child who has never been in a public school and no interest in district programs, your legal obligation is genuinely zero. That is not a loophole and it is not a grey area; it is the plain text of RSA 193-A and the Department of Education says the same thing on its own website.

Then look at what the rest of this page has in common, because it is one pattern and not six.

• A principal wants four passing units of work from the high school's last completed marking period, in a state that says your calendar need not match theirs, and the record has to go on a transcript the school maintains.
• A community college wants your teenager registered correctly before the term, or the course costs half tuition and earns no high school credit.
• A scholarship organization wants an annual record of educational attainment by July 15, in the exact three shapes the state just stopped requiring.
• A university wants documentation of completed secondary studies at enrollment, in a state that issues no diploma and will only countersign a certificate you write yourself.
• A federal enlistment statute keys on compliance with your state's education laws, in a state whose education laws now require essentially nothing, which is a harder sentence to evidence than a filing cabinet would be.
• A principal may one day decide what all those years were worth in credits if your teenager walks back through the door.

Every one of those wants the same thing: a record of what was taught and how it went. New Hampshire has removed every reason you would keep one as compliance, and left every reason you would want one as evidence. That is a genuinely awkward position to be in, and it is the exact position a family in a deregulated state is most likely to be caught out by, because there is nothing on the calendar to remind you.

That is what we built. Mrs. M teaches your child the four core subjects one on one, at their level, and keeps a record of every session as a byproduct of doing it: which subject, which lesson, what your child worked on, how they did. If you upload a curriculum you already bought, she teaches from its actual pages and the record says so. When a New Hampshire principal asks what the last marking period looked like, or a scholarship organization asks for a portfolio a certified teacher can evaluate, or an admissions office asks for documentation of completed secondary studies, the answer is already written down, because writing it down was never a separate job.

We do not promise your child will hit any particular mark, in New Hampshire or anywhere else. Nobody honest does. What we will say is that a state deciding to stop asking should be a gift, not a trap, and the difference between the two is whether anything got written down along the way.

Curious how this works day to day when there is no state curriculum to follow? Here's the honest guide to teaching your own curriculum with us, written for every out-of-state family, New Hampshire included. Since New Hampshire has just removed every reason to keep records and left every reason to want them, homeschool record keeping is the natural next read. And if the reason you are here is a child who was struggling in a classroom, start with homeschooling with an IEP or a learning difference. Or see the requirements for every other state.