Homeschool Requirements in New Hampshire

New Hampshire 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step is still yours, and it is the one families miss: a child who is enrolled in a public school right now has to be withdrawn, and reading this page does not do it.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 New Hampshire 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

A declaration is optional in general but required on withdrawal from a public school. RSA 193-A:3, as re-enacted by 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 297, reads: “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.” The declaration itself is defined at RSA 193-A:1, III as “an optional written statement that the student is home educated and meets the New Hampshire compulsory attendance requirements, signed by a parent which identifies a home educated student by name, date of birth, and current address.” Note the gap: the new section says a declaration is required on withdrawal but names no recipient and no deadline. Give it to the school you are leaving, keep a copy, and keep proof you sent it. The old rule is gone. It used to require notice to the commissioner of education, the resident district superintendent, or a nonpublic school principal within 5 business days of commencing the program, whether you were starting fresh, withdrawing from a public school, or moving into a district, plus a further notice when a program ended. Both are repealed. RSA 193-A:4, V(c) bars a state agency, school district or government entity from using “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”, and RSA 193-A:4, VI makes any information submitted about a home education program confidential.

Days and hours

No minimum days or hours. RSA 193-A:4, III is affirmative about it: “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.”

Subjects the law names

None listed in statute any longer. The subject list (science, mathematics, language, government, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, the history of the New Hampshire and United States constitutions, and exposure to art and music) was in the old RSA 193-A:4, and section 297:3 repealed and re-enacted RSA 193-A:1-5. The new RSA 193-A:4 is about parental rights and carries no subject list. Teach what you judge your child needs. If a college or a trade program wants a particular course, that is their requirement, not the state’s.

What you keep

None. Section 297:10 of the act repealed RSA 193-A:6 outright, so the old portfolio duty (a log of reading materials by title, plus samples of writing, worksheets, workbooks or creative work, kept two years) no longer exists in any form. RSA 193-A:4, V(c) also bars the state from using the absence of records against you in a neglect proceeding. Keep your own records anyway. Colleges will ask, and so will anyone who ever questions the education you gave.

Testing and evaluation

None. The annual evaluation (a nationally normed test, the state assessment, a certified-teacher portfolio review, or an agreed alternative) lived in RSA 193-A:6, and section 297:10 repealed that section. Nothing replaced it. You may still test or have work reviewed if you want the outside read.

The diploma and the transcript

New Hampshire does not issue or validate a homeschool diploma; the parent issues it. RSA 193-A:5 provides for a certificate of completion carrying the child’s name and date of birth, the parents’ names, the date of completion and the parent’s signature, and provides that if a parent submits the certificate to the commissioner of the department of education, the commissioner shall issue a certificate of completion within 30 days of receipt. Education Freedom Accounts and home education are mutually exclusive by definition: RSA 193-A:1, IV excludes from “home education” a student participating in the EFA program established in RSA 194-F, and RSA 193-A:4, VII terminates a home education program when the student enrolls full time in a public school, a public charter school, a nonpublic school, or the EFA program. New Hampshire’s EFAs opened to all income levels in 2025, though an annual enrollment cap still applies to higher-income households. The act also amended RSA 169-C:3, XIX so that a child participating in a home education program under RSA 193-A is not considered a neglected child solely on the basis of that participation, and RSA 193-A:9, limiting school district liability, survives untouched.

A diploma you signed yourself rests on the transcript behind it and on nothing else. What does not belong on a homeschool transcript.

If the transcript is the piece you are short of, it is free on its own: The Transcript Template, with the weighted and unweighted GPA already working.

Where this comes from

Statute: N.H. RSA ch. 193-A (Home Education), repealed and re-enacted in part by 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 297 (HB 1268), approved July 10, 2026, home education sections eff. July 1, 2026; N.H. Admin. R. Ed 315 (repeal directed by 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 297:9)

Source: https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billText.aspx?id=1715&txtFormat=html&sy=2026

Last reviewed: July 2026, on the 26th.

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.