The QHE annual report: a plain-English guide

What it is

Every Queensland family registered for home education submits a written report to Queensland Home Education (QHE) once per year, in the window between two and three months before each anniversary of their child’s registration. It’s a standing condition of registration under section 217 of the Education (General Provisions) Act 2006 (Qld). One report per registered child, anniversary-based, not calendar-based: a family with three children will have three independent due dates.

The report uses the official form published by QHE: the Reporting for Registration for Home Education form, version 10, often abbreviated as RHE-1 V10. Use of the form itself is not strictly mandatory, but it is what assessors expect to receive and what the department’s procedure points to.

What it has to contain

The form is structured to elicit evidence against the eight statutory quality criteria for high-quality education. In practice you need four things in the document:

• A year-in-review. Six reflective prompts about the past year: general impressions, whether goals were achieved, changes made to the program, highlights and lowlights, areas of most success, anything else relevant.
• Six annotated work samples. Two dated samples in each of three learning areas (English, Mathematics, plus one of Science, HASS, HPE, the Arts, Technologies, or Languages). Each sample needs a parental annotation. See the work samples guide for what the annotation has to cover.
• A write-up of each learning area. Goals, approach, outcomes, and the samples that evidence the outcomes. Short prose. The form gives you the structure.
• Level statements.Where your child sits relative to age peers in English and Mathematics. Honest is fine. “Working below age level and tracking upward” is a valid answer; assessors are not penalising honesty.

What assessors are looking for

QHE is checking that the document makes your homeschool visible. The eight quality criteria are the underlying rubric. The most common reason a report is asked to be revised is not that the homeschool is poor; it is that the document ran thin: annotations were skipped, prompts were answered generically, samples weren’t dated, the level statements were vague. A well-supported child still gets a please-resubmit notice if the document fails to do its job. See common reasons reports get sent back.

The full text of the eight criteria, with what each one means in practice, is on the quality criteria page.

How long it takes

Most parents say a weekend, sometimes more. The writing is slow because the document expects observation language (“the child demonstrated… by…”) rather than impression language (“the child enjoyed…”), and the annotations require you to translate what was in your head all year into a four-part sentence per sample. The form itself is ten pages of structured fields with no automatic save.

When it’s due

The reporting window opens in the ninth month after your child’s registration anniversary and closes at the end of the tenth month. QHE emails a reminder when the window opens, with a unique link valid until the due date. Full details on the report cycle page.

How to submit

Three options. Online portal via the unique link QHE emails you. Email a completed Word document or PDF to homeeducation@qed.qld.gov.au. Or post to The Manager, Home Education Unit, Department of Education, PO Box 3710, South Brisbane Business Centre QLD 4101. The parent must submit personally; helpers can prepare the document but not lodge it.