Homeschool Requirements in Georgia
Georgia asks very little of you. You did not bring your children home for the sake of a form. Here is the form anyway. Begin with the first heading: what you send in, if anything, and the day it is due. There is not much after that. Every claim is cited at the foot, so you can hold it against the code rather than take our word for it.
What you send in, and when it is due
Submit a Declaration of Intent to Utilize a Home Study Program to the Georgia Department of Education (electronically, via the GaDOE portal - not to the local district) within 30 days of establishing the program, and annually thereafter by September 1. It must list the names and ages of the students, the address where the program is located, and the dates of the school year.
Days and hours
Instruction each 12 months equivalent to 180 school days, with each school day consisting of at least 4.5 school hours - unless the child’s education is impeded by physical or mental disability, or by an emergency.
Subjects the law names
Reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science.
What you keep
Parents must maintain attendance records for the home study program and keep the annual written progress assessment reports for at least three years. Since 2016 (HB 739) monthly attendance reports are no longer submitted to the state - attendance records are kept at home only. Standardized test results are also retained, not submitted.
Testing and evaluation
Students must take a nationally standardized achievement test at least every three years beginning at the end of the third grade. Scores are retained by the parent and are not reported to the state or the local district. Separately, the teaching parent must write an annual progress assessment report evaluating the child’s progress in each required subject; also retained, not submitted.
An assessment is read against what you wrote down while it was happening, which is the part a morning hour tends to lose. Putting morning time and the church year on a record without inflating it.
What an evaluator or a test result gets attached to is the folder beneath the transcript. The Records Pack has the portfolio index with its evaluator summary, editable, in both editions.
The diploma and the transcript
Georgia does not issue diplomas, credits, or transcripts for home study students; the parent issues the diploma and transcript, and a parent-issued diploma is treated as valid for state purposes (including HOPE Scholarship eligibility, which has a specific homeschool pathway administered by GSFC requiring SAT/ACT scores and a transcript). The teaching parent must hold at least a high school diploma or a state-approved High School Equivalency (HSE) diploma; tutors employed must meet the same standard. There are no state-imposed graduation credit requirements. Note the Georgia Promise Scholarship (SB 233, 2024; first awards 2025-26) provides $6,500 accounts, but eligibility is tied to students zoned for low-performing schools and its interaction with a declared home study program is narrow - verify eligibility rules directly with the Georgia Education Savings Authority rather than assuming home study participation qualifies.
A Christian college and a public university read the same page for different things. What each one asks a homeschooler for.
Where this comes from
Statute: O.C.G.A. 20-2-690(c) (home study program requirements); O.C.G.A. 20-2-690.1 (compulsory attendance, ages 6-16); O.C.G.A. 20-2-2110 et seq. (Georgia Promise Scholarship)
Last reviewed: July 2026. The day is not recorded.
Homeschool law changes, and a page like this goes quietly out of date. Before a filing deadline, read the code above yourself. If we have fallen behind we would much rather hear it from you than have you find out at a district office.
All fifty states and the District of Columbia, each one citing the law it came from.
Filing is one part of it. Keeping the record is the other, and that is what our Records System is for: the editable transcript with the GPA already working, 131 academic course descriptions, the Bible and theology descriptions, and this same cited summary for every state and DC. Protestant and Catholic editions. Thirty-nine dollars, one household, however many children you teach.