\u201cAll three of the Phillips children had valid certificates of exemption for home education,\u201d Marcus Freke, the director of education for Waikato, confirmed in a statement to the Herald on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe certificates were applied for by their legal guardian, Tom Phillips, and were awarded prior to July 2021,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s information the ministry tried to keep secret, refusing the Herald\u2019s Official Information Act (OIA) request for months, before the Ombudsman investigated and intervened \u2013 forcing the ministry to release the information this week.<\/p>\n
Te Anga Rd, where Tom Phillips was killed in a shootout with police. Before disappearing into the bush with his children for years, he convinced the ministry to let him keep them out of school. Parents can apply online, and most never receive a monitoring visit. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe release of this information would provide transparency and accountability around the ministry\u2019s role in managing the homeschool applications and would clarify that the children\u2019s absence from school was approved,\u201d John Allen, Chief Ombudsman, wrote in his opinion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis goes towards the substantial public interest in this case as to whether government agencies had acted sufficiently in relation to the children\u2019s disappearance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Phillips disappeared with his three children<\/a> \u2013 then aged 5, 7 and 8 \u2013 in December 2021, isolating them from society, family and peers for nearly four years, hiding in dense Waikato bush.<\/p>\n During that time, he defied a court order and engaged in various crimes, including bank robbery and stealing vehicles, before being shot dead in the early hours of September 8 in an altercation with police<\/a>, during which he critically injured an officer.<\/p>\n Homeschooling was a family tradition: Tom Phillips himself was partially homeschooled as a young boy on the same Marokopa farm before later attending exclusive private boarding school St Paul\u2019s Collegiate<\/a>.<\/p>\n The revelation that Phillips was able to successfully apply for three certificates of exemption raises questions about the ministry\u2019s screening processes at a time when homeschooling rates in New Zealand are at a record high. The numbers have nearly doubled since 2017 and continued to climb post-Covid.<\/p>\n In July 2025, New Zealand had 11,010 homeschooled children<\/a> belonging to 6518 families \u2013 that\u2019s roughly the same number of students as our three largest state schools combined: Rangitoto College, Mt Albert Grammar School, and Maclean\u2019s College.<\/p>\n Despite 1.3% of New Zealand\u2019s children receiving their schooling at home, there is no regular monitoring of their educations \u2013 or even whether they are receiving educations at all.<\/p>\n Homeschooled children in New Zealand are not required to follow the national curriculum, or do NCEA or any external assessments.<\/p>\n While the Ministry of Education grants the exemptions, the Education Review Office (ERO) has the power to visit and review homeschooling families.<\/p>\n But funding for reviews was cut in 2010 under then-Prime Minister John Key and Education Minister Anne Tolley, and ERO stopped its review cycle of homeschool programmes. <\/p>\n It now performs reviews only rarely \u2013 for example, on request from the Secretary of Education or if a member of the public raises a concern.<\/p>\n