Parents interested in home-schooling their children can apply from March next year, the Education Ministry said, even though the law that has legalised this form of learning comes into force on Friday.

The Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education will accept applications from March 1. A process will then kick off for the regulator to approve the home-schooling application, in line with the requirements of the Education Act, the ministry said.

It was asked to clarify the timings after it announced last month, at the launch of the new law, that parents could now educate their own children provided they had a warrant and a “valid reason”.

Keen parents rushed to enrol their children but were told by the Department of Education that there were no time frames yet and that the application forms would come out in about five months’ time.

The Education Ministry has also highlighted that home-schooling is “not an alternative learning path for keeping children at home in extraordinary events such as a pandemic”.

One acceptable reason for home-schooling is in the case of families who move countries frequently and parents who constantly travel due to their work.

According to the Education Act, passed in 2019, parents would also need to have a teaching warrant and a licence. 

They would have to present an educational programme and syllabus that includes social and physical education components to avoid having these students just sitting behind a screen, Malta Further and Higher Education Authority head of legal, Dennis Zammit had explained at the presentation of the new law.

Talks about introducing home-schooling have been going on since at least 2013. Some parents say they want to “save” their children from the academic pressures of mainstream schooling.