Homeschool Requirements in Illinois

Illinois asks nothing of you each year. No yearly notice. No registration, no testing, nothing to send in. What your children are taught, and why, stays between you and the One you answer to. One step is still yours, and it is the one families miss: a child who is enrolled in a public school right now has to be withdrawn, and reading this page does not do it. Do that first. Everything below is what Illinois actually requires, with the code named at the foot so you can read it for yourself.

What you send in, and when it is due

None. Illinois requires no notice of intent, no registration, no approval and no reporting. ISBE offers a purely voluntary Non-Public School Registration; registering is optional and carries no legal obligation. If a truant officer or regional superintendent inquires, the accepted practice is to send a short letter stating the child is enrolled in a private (home) school teaching the required branches of education in English. Worth watching: HB 2827 (the “Homeschool Act”) would have created a mandatory Homeschool Declaration Form filed with the district and made non-filers truant. It passed the House Education Policy Committee but was re-referred to Rules on April 11, 2025 and was not enacted; it remains dead as of this writing. Because it is a two-year General Assembly running through January 2027, the bill or a successor could be revived. Of the nine states that ask for no notice of intent and no annual report, Illinois is the likeliest to change first.

Days and hours

None. No minimum days, no minimum hours, no required school calendar, no attendance schedule for home/private schools.

Subjects the law names

The “branches of education taught to children of corresponding age and grade in the public schools,” taught in English (105 ILCS 5/26-1). Per 105 ILCS 5/27-1 and ISBE guidance those branches are: language arts; mathematics; biological and physical sciences; social sciences; fine arts; and physical development and health. Illinois also has topical mandates for public schools that are generally not enforced against home/private schools.

What you keep

None required by statute. Nothing is submitted to anyone. Parents are nonetheless advised to keep attendance logs, curriculum lists, samples of work and grades, both to answer a truancy inquiry under 105 ILCS 5/26-1 and to build a credible high school transcript.

Testing and evaluation

None. No standardized testing, evaluation, or assessment requirement whatsoever.

The diploma and the transcript

The homeschool operates as a private school and sets its own graduation requirements, issues its own diploma and transcript. No state approval, registration, credit definition or GED substitute is required. Illinois public universities accept parent-issued diplomas; individual programs may request course descriptions or standardized test scores. Note Illinois has no homeschool ESA or voucher, the Invest in Kids tax-credit scholarship program sunset on December 31, 2023 and was not renewed, and it never covered home instruction. Homeschooled students’ access to public school courses, sports and services is at each district’s discretion; Illinois has no statutory equal-access right.

Deciding what counted as a course, before any of it reaches a transcript, is its own piece of work. Awarding credit for theology, apologetics and church history.

A Christian college and a public university read the same page for different things. What each one asks a homeschooler for.

A required course becomes something a reader can weigh once there is a paragraph under it. The Course Description Library is 131 of them in one Word file you edit.

Where this comes from

Statute: 105 ILCS 5/26-1 (compulsory attendance / private school exemption); 105 ILCS 5/27-1 (branches of education); see also People v. Levisen, 404 Ill. 574 (1950) (home instruction qualifies as a private school)

Source: https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/fulltext?DocName=010500050K26-1

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.