Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an online teacher, many homeschool families use less formal, more personalized and individualized methods of learning that are not always found in schools. The actual practice of homeschooling can look very different. The spectrum ranges from highly structured forms based on traditional school lessons to more open, free forms such as unschooling, which is a lesson- and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling, to not educating children at all. Some families who initially attended a school go through a deschool phase to break away from school habits and prepare for homeschooling. While "homeschooling" is the term commonly used in North America, "home education" is primarily used in Europe and many Commonwealth countries. Homeschooling should not be confused with distance education, which generally refers to the arrangement where the student is educated by and conforms to the requirements of an online school, rather than being educated independently and unrestrictedly by their parents or by themselves.
Unschooling is an informal learning that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschoolers learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Often considered a lesson- and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling, unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, believing that the more personal learning is, the more meaningful, well-understood and therefore useful it is to the child. While courses may occasionally be taken, unschooling questions the usefulness of standard curricula, fixed times at which learning should take place, conventional grading methods in standardized tests, forced contact with children in their own age group, the compulsion to do homework, regardless of whether it helps the learner in their individual situation, the effectiveness of listening to and obeying the orders of one authority figure for several hours each day, and other features of traditional schooling in the education of each unique child.
Home education in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is often termed "elective home education" ("EHE") to signify the independent nature of practice from state provisions such as education for children with ill-health provided by the local authority in the family home. EHE is a collective term used in the UK to describe education provided other than through the schooling system. Parents have a duty to ensure their children are educated but the education legislation in England and Wales does not differentiate between school attendance or education otherwise than at school. Scots education legislation on the other hand differentiates between public (state) school provision and education "by other means", which includes both private schooling and home education. The numbers of families retaining direct responsibility for the education of their children has steadily increased since the late 1970s. This increase has coincided with the formation of support groups such as Education Otherwise. Home education may involve an informal style of education described as unschooling, informal learning, natural or autonomous learning. Others prefer to retain a structured school at home approach sometimes referred to as homeschooling although the terms are often interchanged.
Education in Canada is for the most part provided publicly, and is funded and overseen by provincial, territorial and local governments. Education is within provincial jurisdiction and the curriculum is overseen by the province. Education in Canada is generally divided into primary education, followed by secondary education and post-secondary. Within the provinces under the ministry of education, there are district school boards administering the educational programs.
Alternative education encompasses many pedagogical approaches differing from mainstream pedagogy. Such alternative learning environments may be found within state, charter, and independent schools as well as home-based learning environments. Many educational alternatives emphasize small class sizes, close relationships between students and teachers and a sense of community.
The education system in Tasmania comprises the education of children from their early years, through kindergarten, primary and high school, and tertiary education in universities and vocational education and training organisations. The system is delivered by the government-run K-12 schooling system, and numerous independent schools and colleges, most of which are controlled or sponsored by religious organisations. Public education in Tasmania is managed primarily by the Tasmanian Department of Education. The Department is responsible for all aspects of education in Tasmania including schooling, adult education, the State Library and TasTAFE, a vocational tertiary institution with many campuses around the state.
Deschooling is a term invented by Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich. Today, the word is mainly used by homeschoolers, especially unschoolers, to refer to the transition process that children and parents go through when they leave the school system in order to start homeschooling. It is a crucial process that is the basis for homeschooling to work, in which children should slowly break out of their school routine and mentality, develop the ability to learn via self-determination again, and find interests to decide what they want to learn in their first homeschool days. Depending on the type of person and time the child spent in the school system, this phase can last different lengths of time and may have different effects on the behavior of children. Especially in the first days of deschooling, it is often the case that children mainly want to recover from the school surroundings and therefore will generally sleep very long and refuse any kind of intentional learning and instead search for substitute satisfactions like watching TV or playing video games, very similar to the behavior during early school holidays. Moving on in this transition process, children may feel bored or cannot cope well with the missing daily structure, until they eventually find out how to make use of their time and freedom to find interests, which in the best case results in them voluntarily informing themselves about certain things they are interested in, whereupon homeschooling can start.
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is a United States-based organization that seeks to aid homeschooling families through legal representation. HSLDA describes itself as a "Christian organization."
Homeschooling in the United States of America constitutes the education of about 3.4% of U.S. students as of 2012. The number of homeschoolers in the United States has increased steadily over the past few decades since the end of the 20th century. In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that parents have a fundamental right to direct the education of their children. The right to homeschool is not frequently questioned in court, but the amount of state regulation and help that can or should be expected continues to be subject to legal debate.
Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason was a British educator and reformer in England at the turn of the twentieth century. She proposed to base the education of children upon a wide and liberal curriculum. She was inspired by the writings of the Bible, John Amos Comenius, Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin.
Peter Kowalke is an American unschooling advocate best known for his work on grown homeschoolers and the lasting influence of homeschooling. He was one of the first authors to explore the lasting influence that homeschooling has on a person in terms of identity, and produced a large body of work on the topic from 1994 until 2013, after which he stepped back from the homeschooling community to focus on contextualizing the Indian Advaita Vedanta philosophy for American culture.
Single-parent homeschooling is the practice of conducting homeschool by a parent who may be the sole breadwinner for the family. According to the peer-review journal Education Policy Analysis, based on the findings of the National Household Education Survey, of the National Center of Educational Statistics, between 1994 and 1999 the number of single-parent homeschools almost doubled. No further statistics are currently available. It is the general perception, by most homeschooling advocates, that most single-parent homeschools are led by a self-employed single parent, one that is receiving public assistance, or someone that has received a life insurance settlement. In some single-parent homeschool circles it is thought that most-single parent homeschools are run by parents who work full-time jobs outside the home. No statistics have been compiled to confirm or invalidate either supposition.
Secular Homeschooling was an American magazine for people who homeschool for reasons other than religion. It began as a quarterly, but became a bimonthly in July 2009. The magazine is no longer published and the final issue was released in 2011.
The legality of homeschooling in India and a plethora of alternative education schools spread over different states has been debated by educators, lawmakers, and parents since the passing of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) which makes formal education a fundamental right of every child between the ages of 6 to 14 and specifies minimum norms for schools. While the legality of homeschooling still remains a grey area, there have been petitions by parents and alternate schools in the past for granting relief. As per the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which India is a signatory, quote: "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children."
Homeschooling is legal in many countries. Countries with the most prevalent homeschooling movements include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Some countries have highly regulated homeschooling programs as an extension of the compulsory school system; few others, such as Germany, have outlawed it entirely. In some other countries, while not restricted by law, homeschooling is not socially acceptable, or is considered undesirable, and is virtually non-existent.
Homeschooling in New Zealand is legal. The Ministry of Education reports annually on the population, age, ethnicity, and turnover of students being educated at home. The most recent statistics show:
"As at 1 July 2017, there were 6,008 home schooled students recorded in the Ministry of Education's Homeschooling database. These students belong to 3,022 families and represent 0.8% of total school enrolments as at 1 July 2017. Out of the 6,008 homeschoolers 67.3% were the aged 12 or under, 68.3% had been home-schooled for less than 5 years, and only 4.2% had been home-schooled for 10 years or more. European/Pākehā students are more likely to be homeschooled than any other ethnic group with 80.2% of all homeschoolers identifying as European/Pākehā compared to 50.1% of the total school population. Only 8.7% of homeschoolers identify as Māori compared to 24.0% of the total school population, 2.6% of homeschoolers identify as Pasifika compared to 9.8% of the total school population, and 2.2% of homeschoolers identify as Asian compared to 11.8% of the total school population. The ethnicity of 2.0% of homeschoolers is unknown."
Homeschooling in South Africa had been illegal, until it was recognized in 1996 under the South African School Legislation, since then it has grown significantly.
There was a resurgence of homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Variations of homeschooling include micro schools and educational family co-ops. The first usually involves hired professionals to teach a small group of kids. The second is a parent-organized co-operative where families take turns educating and minding their kids during the week. Both are largely available only to the well-off, as costs in time and money are high. 'Pandemic pod' is the fashionable term used to describe one of these arrangements where all group members agree to participate under well-defined and strictly enforced health rules.
In Australia, homeschooling is becoming increasingly popular. It is legal in all Australian states and territories, with each having its own regulations around the practice. Distance education is also prevalent for Australians who live in remote, rural areas. There are more than a dozen universities in Australia that support distance education for tertiary studies. Some Australians switch between distance education and classroom teaching. The number of homeschooled children and students who take distance education in Australia is approximately 30,000. The number of registered homeschoolers alone was 21,437 in 2019; this corresponds to 0.5 per cent of the total school population of Australia. In the 2010s, the average growth rate of the practice amounted to 9.4 per cent per year. The largest Christian school of distance education in Australia is the Australian Christian College, which has over 1,700 families with 4,000 students enrolled. Homeschooling generally enjoys a very good reputation in the Australian media and is widely seen as a flexible alternative form of education with good socialization opportunities in the community.
Education in British Columbia comprises public and private primary and secondary schools throughout the province. Like most other provinces in Canada, education is compulsory from ages 6–16, although the vast majority of students remain in school until they graduate from high school at the age of 18. In 2020, 86% of students in British Columbia graduated from high school within six years of entering grade 8. It is also common for children to attend kindergarten at the age of 5, it is increasingly common for even younger children to attend pre-school or early learning programs before their formal school age years.
