Is The Rise And Rise Of Homeschooling Explained By Advances In Tech?

Is The Rise And Rise Of Homeschooling Explained By Advances In Tech?T his is the first article in a two-part series on homeschooling. In this mini-series, I shall challenge the assertion that the reason for the meteoric growth in home education was Covid and suggest it was down to an assortment of factors; the alluring ‘pull’ of studying at home and the uncomfortable ‘push’ driving students out of the school environment. In this first article, we look at the background behind the rise in home education and the ‘pull’ factors.UNDER THE RADARI was intrigued recently by the increased level of interest in home education learners applying to use Kloodle, the digital skills development platform. After a flurry of Googling, I was surprised to discover that a whopping 3.7 million young people, and rising, are currently being homeschooled in the US, almost 7% of the school-age population. Similarly, in the UK, passing under the media radar somewhat, there has been a surge in homeschooling, the popularity of which, as you can see from the graph below, shot up rapidly during the Covid-19 pandemic when schools were forced to close for several months, disrupting the education of millions of children. The number of children registering for home education in the UK has increased four-fold since 2008, although only accounts for 1% of the population of schoolchildren.WAS THE RISE ALL DUE TO THE IMPACT OF COVID?Many councils have quoted the outbreak of Covid as the principal reason for the increase in home education; it gave students an opportunity to taste a lifestyle where they were able to study from the comfort of their own home. However, despite Covid restrictions being lifted and schools re-opening, many parents have opted to commence or continue to homeschool their children and, as the graph above shows, numbers have carried on growing post-lockdown.Although the pandemic has been a convenient excuse used by councils and governments to explain the sustained rise in home education, there are other assorted ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors at play.THE ‘PULL’ FACTORS: THE BENEFITS OF HOMESCHOOLINGThe world has changed immeasurably since the days when the US author and educator John Holt first unveiled the philosophy of what he referred to as “ unschooling ” or “autonomous education” in the 1970s. His belief was that if you give a child the freedom to follow their own interests, allied with a rich assortment of resources, they will do the actual learning themselves. Following his methodology, homeschoolers today can, for example, develop and fine tune research skills and learn how to ‘ think like a scientist’ .Also, homeschooling can boost overall well-being; Wolsey Hall Oxford’s recent survey found that 91.5% of parents believe that their child’s wellbeing has improved since they opted for home-schooling.Historically, one of the big stumbling blocks has been that ‘home ed’ can prove difficult for parents to manage; some guardians do the teaching themselves but it’s hard to be a teacher as well as a parent. And what if the children are brighter than their parents? A popular solution to avoid this conflict is for some parents to adopt a role of being a ‘ Chief Learning Officer’ , where they don’t teach but instead ‘cause to learn’ through encouragement or facilitation.This way home-ed can be ‘child-led’ so that as well as completing syllabus tasks, the children also learn about prioritisation and problem-solving. Being self-directed involves higher level skills; this fits in with a lifelong learning philosophy and self-motivation. The focus is on skill development; for example, understanding the principles of maths and language, rather than on accumulation of knowledge.One of the big criticisms of homeschooling has been that homeschooled children are ‘ out of society ’ and find it hard to make relationships . In life, people need social interactions and friends. However, the landscape here has changed. There is so much...