The Short Answer: No Provincial Money
PEI has no homeschool funding program of any kind. The province funds public schools, and when you file your notice of intention, no money follows your child home. There is no per-student grant like Alberta's, and no division grants like Saskatchewan's. You send the Notice of Intention and a signed declaration to the Department of Education before the school year starts, and once your notice is on file, the province asks little of you and pays nothing toward it. The one exception is small but real: PEI lends provincial curriculum books for a refundable $50 deposit per child, returned when you give the books back.
The tax return offers nothing either. Homeschool expenses are not deductible federally or in PEI, and no credit applies to the curriculum, supplies, or lessons you pay for at home. The CRA counts 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 PEI Pays Nothing
PEI runs a notice model: you tell the Department you intend to home educate, sign a declaration accepting responsibility for the program, and teach. What the province never built is a supervising channel, the structure 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. PEI takes your notice 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 lightest arrangements in the country. You file once a year, teach what suits your kids, and no one requires testing or progress reports. Our guide to how to homeschool in PEI walks the whole cycle from the notice to high school. You give up the money, and you keep the year on your own terms.
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, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick pay nothing, and Quebec pays nothing in cash but makes its school service centres lend homeschoolers textbooks, a rule our Quebec funding guide explains. PEI sits with the nothing group on cash, with one difference worth naming: it lends you the provincial books for a refundable deposit, so the Island gives families a bit more than Newfoundland and Labrador and its other Atlantic neighbours do.
Should you move for the money? No. A $901 grant doesn't cover a moving truck, and funded provinces attach oversight PEI 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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The One Thing PEI Does Give You
This is where PEI stands apart from the other unfunded provinces. If you want to teach from the public system's curriculum, you file a Request for Home Education Learning Resources form and pay a refundable $50 deposit per child. The Department lends you the provincial textbooks, and when you return them at the end of the year, the deposit comes back to you. That is not a grant, but it is a full set of materials at almost no cost, and few provinces offer it. The Department also publishes curriculum guides and a learning resources list that any homeschooling family can read for free, whether or not you borrow the physical books.
Free and Cheap Resources PEI Families Use
Beyond the provincial books, the reading load lands on the library. PEI's public library service runs a single card across the Island, and holds travel between branches, which puts a deep collection within reach of families in every community. Nothing requires you to follow the provincial curriculum, so many families read the guides for structure and build their own program around free materials.
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 are done. Co-op families split the cost of science kits, share teacher manuals, and trade levels as kids grow.
What Homeschooling Costs in PEI
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 borrow the provincial books, lean on the library, and buy used 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 PEI adds a wrinkle many families miss until it is close.
A child taught entirely at home does not receive a PEI High School Diploma unless they enter the public system and earn the required credits. Families with teens plan around that: some enrol for the credit years in senior high, others look at adult education or portfolio-based college admission, all compared in our guide to the PEI 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 how little PEI asks of a homeschooling family. The province tells you plainly: file a notice, 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 softens that is the book loan: for a refundable $50, you can borrow a full set of provincial curriculum, which is a real help in a first year when money is tight and nerves are high.
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. Borrow the provincial books if they fit your plan, file your notice before the school year starts, and decide the high school route before your child turns 14. 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. PEI 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.
Does the $50 Book Deposit Come Back?
Yes. The $50 is a deposit, not a fee: you pay it per child when you borrow the provincial curriculum books, and the Department returns it when you give the books back in good condition at the end of the year. It is the only money PEI asks of a homeschooling family, and even that is refundable. Homeschooling itself is free.
Where Do the Real Costs Show Up?
High school, more sharply than most families expect. A child taught entirely at home does not receive a PEI High School Diploma, so families pay for the routes around the rule when a teen needs a credential, or enrol them in senior high for the credit years. Our diploma guide compares those routes and what they cost. The elementary years stay cheap with a library card, the provincial book loan, 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.