Homeschooling

Families deliberately choose this path for many reasons including dissatisfaction with their local schools, safety fears, worries about negative social experiences, or religious/philosophical beliefs. Homeschooling is legal across all US states (although each has varying requirements for registration) and in the majority of countries around the world. It is very easy to look up each state or country’s requirements and for the most part heading into this path is simple and straightforward. Parents do not need an education degree or advanced teaching knowledge to homeschool. In fact, the research shows that the education of the parent has no link to how well children who are homeschooled do. The bulk of them do better than their public or private school peers.

Many people who are new to the homeschooling journey start out in a more traditional path and replicate school at home. This is a perfectly fine way to kick off the journey of alternative learning and is often more comfortable to parents than other approaches. There are many types of online programs or curriculum packages to purchase and all of these have step-by-step instructions for helping guide children of all ages. Overload of choices may be the most complicated aspect of this.

Homeschooling has grown in popularity in the US over the last couple of decades going from 850,000 in 1999 to 1,690.000 in 2016. This represented 1.7% then 3.3% respectably of the population of US children in kindergarten through grade 12. In the United Kingdom homeschooling has grown by 65% since 2009. And homeschooling is now viewed as a mainstream choice in education and is growing around the world including in Australia, Canada, France, Hungary, Japan, Kenya, Russia, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, UK and in the US.