Welcome to the Home Educators Student Sports Association, HESSA.

Every young person in New Zealand deserves equal opportunities to play the sports they choose, at the level they choose, alongside their peers—without barriers based on how they’re educated.

HESSA (The Home Educators Students Sports Association) is a registered charity founded in 2023 to advocate for fair and inclusive access to student sports for homeschooled students. Currently, the playing field isn’t just uneven—many homeschooled students can’t even get on the field.

Is it fair that a team of Year 9 students in Auckland can’t play age-grade table tennis on a Thursday night?

Or that a teenage girls’ volleyball team in Wellington is excluded from competing against other student teams?

Or that a mountain biker is denied the medal she earned in a regional competition held on a Saturday - simply because they’re homeschooled and the sanctioning body labels these competitions as “school sport”?

These are secondary-age competitions, held week nights and on weekends, in public facilities, yet homeschooled students are excluded  because of how they’re legally educated.

From Year 9 onwards, most regions offer no club teams or competitions for secondary-age students. That’s because sport shifts from clubs into schools, and control moves from regional sports bodies to school-led organisations, which sanction most competitions as “school sport”, even when they happen outside school grounds and hours.

The reality is, there aren’t enough young people in each sport to run duplicate competitions for the same age group—and doing so would be inefficient. So when school-led bodies take control, homeschooled students are simply left out.

At the primary and adult levels, sport is inclusive run through clubs. But at the secondary level, students are excluded or treated unfairly, not because of ability or interest, but because school-led bodies choose who gets to play.

Sport happening outside of school should not be called “school sport.”

​​​​​​​

A student's legal education shouldn't be used to deny them equal opportunities in sport that happens outside of the school gate.

Help HESSA make sport fair and inclusive for all New Zealand students.​​​​​​​

Advocating for Inclusion

📣 On 1 July 2025 HESSA presented a parliamentary petition to MP Tom Rutherford  asking the House of Representatives to ensure secondary-age student sport is inclusive of all students. 12 MPs from National, Labour and the Green Party came to support the petition including the Minister for Youth Hon. James Meager. Many other MP's have shared their support for inclusive sport but were unable to attend in person

Two tenacious HESSA members Amelia Twiss (13) and George Fisher (12) cycled 750km to Parliament from the Velodrome in Cambridge to raise awareness and deliver the petition. 

John Baddily, a Wellington mountainbiker and board member of Cycling New Zealand also rode the final leg from Petone to Parliament in support of Amelia and George. His presence sent a clear message: inclusion starts with showing up and taking action. We hope more sporting bodies will follow suit.

The Ride for Inclusion​​​​​​​ Tracker - Journey Completed!