The Short Answer: No Provincial Money
New Brunswick has no homeschool funding program of any kind. The province funds school districts based on enrolment, and when the Minister grants your child's exemption, no money follows your child home. There is no per-student grant like Alberta's, and no division grants like Saskatchewan's. You submit the Annual Home Schooling Application Form to your district by September 15, and once the exemption is granted, the province's involvement mostly ends.
The tax return offers nothing either. Homeschool expenses are not deductible federally or in New Brunswick, and no credit applies to curriculum, supplies, or lessons you pay for at home. The CRA treats those as personal expenses, and no provincial credit hides in the fine print. Families who claim curriculum anyway invite a reassessment, so don't.
Why New Brunswick Pays Nothing
New Brunswick runs a permission model: you apply for an exemption from compulsory attendance, and the Minister grants it when satisfied your child is under effective instruction. What the province never built is a supervising channel, the thing funded provinces use to move money. Alberta pays through school authorities that review education plans and send facilitators, and BC pays the school a family registers with. New Brunswick approves your exemption and steps back, so there is no body to route a cheque through and no reporting to hang conditions on.
That leaves one of the simpler arrangements in the country. You apply once a year, teach what suits your kids, and no one requires testing or progress reports. Our guide to how to homeschool in New Brunswick walks the whole cycle from application to high school. You give up the money, and you keep the year.
What Other Provinces Pay
Alberta is the big exception in Canada. Families who register with a facilitating school authority get $901 per student in grades 1 to 12 reimbursed for curriculum and supplies, and our Alberta homeschool funding guide breaks down how to claim it. Saskatchewan has no province-wide cheque, but many school divisions pay real grants to registered families, which the Saskatchewan funding guide maps out division by division.
BC pays money to the school you register with rather than to you, covered in the BC funding guide. The territories reimburse eligible families for learning materials: the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut all run programs. Ontario, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia pay nothing, and Quebec pays nothing in cash but makes its school service centres lend homeschoolers textbooks, a rule our Quebec funding guide explains. New Brunswick belongs to the nothing group.
Should you move for the money? No. A $901 grant doesn't cover a moving truck, and funded provinces attach oversight New Brunswick families never deal with. Knowing the money doesn't exist is worth something on its own: it frees your evenings for planning instead of searching.
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Free and Cheap Resources New Brunswick Families Use
The province publishes its curriculum documents and learning outcomes online at no cost, and families borrow from them when describing their program on the application. Nothing requires you to follow them. Libraries carry the reading load: the New Brunswick Public Library Service runs one card for the whole province, and holds travel between branches, which puts a deep collection within reach of rural families.
Free full curricula stretch the budget further. Simply Good and Beautiful Math gives away its complete course books for kindergarten through grade 7 as PDF downloads, and Khan Academy covers math and science at no cost. Used curriculum closes most of the remaining gap: buy-and-sell groups move popular programs at half price or better, and non-consumable programs resell when you're done. Co-op families split the cost of science kits, share teacher manuals, and trade levels as kids grow.
What Homeschooling Costs in New Brunswick
A realistic budget for a family buying new materials runs $200 to $700 per child per year, with reading and math programs taking most of it. Families who lean on the library, free curricula, and the used market routinely run a full year for under $150. The two expensive stretches are the first year, when parents overbuy out of nervousness, and high school, where New Brunswick adds a wrinkle other provinces don't.
A child taught entirely at home is not eligible for a New Brunswick High School Diploma, so families with teens pay for the routes around the rule: online credit courses, adult education pathways, or portfolio-based admission, all compared in our guide to the New Brunswick homeschool high school diploma. Budget for that stage early. In the younger years, spend on reading and math first: a free reading assessment takes about ten minutes and stops you from buying the wrong level, and the guide on how to choose homeschool curriculum keeps the rest of the spending honest.
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A Note from Homeschool Teacher Guide: What This Really Means for You
We like New Brunswick's honesty. The province tells you plainly: apply, teach well, and fund it yourself. No grant exists, and none is coming, so the family budget is the homeschool budget from day one. What you get back is a year nobody audits: no required testing, no home visits, and one form each September.
Our advice is the same we give every unfunded province, because it works: set a budget you can keep and put the money where it teaches, reading first, math second, library cards always. Send your application by September 15, plan the high school route before your child turns 14, and spend your energy on the teaching. That's the part no province can fund anyway.
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☕ Buy us a coffee ($5)Frequently Asked Questions
Is There Any Tax Break at All?
No. The CRA treats curriculum, tutoring, co-op fees, and supplies as personal expenses, and the child care expense deduction doesn't apply, because educating your own child is not child care. New Brunswick adds no credit of its own. Your RESP keeps growing for post-secondary, and the Canada Child Benefit arrives no matter how your child is schooled.
Will the School District Lend Us Curriculum or Materials?
No policy requires it. Districts process your application, forward it to the department, and their obligation ends there. The provincial curriculum documents and learning outcomes are free to read online, which helps with planning, but textbooks and materials stay your responsibility. Quebec is the only no-cash province that owes homeschoolers a textbook loan by law.
Where Do the Real Costs Show Up?
High school, more sharply than in most provinces. A child taught entirely at home is not eligible for the New Brunswick High School Diploma, so families pay for online credit courses or other routes when a teen needs a credential. Our diploma guide compares those routes and what they cost. The elementary years stay cheap with a library card and the used market, so bank the savings while you can.
Sources
This guide was verified in July 2026 against the following primary sources. Program details change, so confirm anything that affects your budget directly with the source.