Homeschooling After Three Decades

By Stuart Chapman

Ed. Note:
Home education has flourished in Australia from the 1970s to the present, despite periodic legislative battles in all six states and two territories. Australian Christian Home Schooling (ACHS) is the largest homeschooling organisation in Australia and has over 30 years experience providing home schooling support and expertise to families throughout the South Pacific region. AHCS manager Stuart Chapman provides a glimpse into the state of homeschooling in the land down under.

As of November 2011, the number of students registered for home schooling in Australia was 10,121. This includes 891 students in South Australia (SA) who were exempted from school attendance. In SA there is no provision for home schooling in the Education Act and exemption is the mechanism by which children can be taught at home.

Victoria is the state where registration is easiest and only requires notification and a signed affidavit that a child is being instructed in the eight learning areas as prescribed by the state government.

All other states require a visit from a government representative, usually called a moderator. These visits vary from state to state in terms of expectations and compliance requirements. It is extremely rare that conflicts are resolved in court.

Parents are also required to submit a program for each child, mapping their program to the state curriculum. This can be a daunting task, especially for parents who are just starting home schooling. In order of popularity, the most used methods for home schooling in Australia are the eclectic approach, followed by natural learning, and then those who use a whole curriculum package.

The ratio of home-educated students to school students varies considerably between Australian states as can be seen in the table below:

In Australia the term “under the radar” is commonly used to refer to families who choose not be registered. The number of children who are unregistered is impossible to determine but estimates range from an extra 5,000 to 15,000 students.

Another 4,000 students are educated at home through non-government distance education. Many of these families would consider themselves to homeschoolers even though the school is directing their curriculum. Parents who choose distance education do not have moderator visits or any reporting requirements. This is an area of rapid growth in Australia. One of the major reasons that families choose to send their children back to school is financial. The average price for an Australian home is around $500,000 USD, which usually requires a dual income to pay the mortgage.

Home schooling families are by definition single income and most choose to rent rather than buy as they see it is more important to invest in their children’s education and character than in buildings.

There are home schooling support groups in all capital cities but isolation is still an issue in rural communities.

Overall, home schooling is gradually becoming more accepted by both the community in Australia and by tertiary education institutions, as the number of students who have achieved success at university or in the workplace increases.

Stuart is married to Dianne and they have been home schooling their four sons and one daughter for 15 years. Visit the Australian Christian Home Schooling website or contact Stuart via email.

Other Resources

Learn more by visiting HSLDA’s Australia page

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https://hef.org.nz/getting-started-2/

and

https://hef.org.nz/exemptions

Updated January 29, 2012 11:49:48

Map: Australia

As a new school year begins, more than 50,000 Australian children will be home-schooled and in most cases, their parents are doing it illegally.

It is compulsory to send children between the ages of six and 16 to school, or register them for home schooling, but more parents are opting out of the traditional school system and keeping their children at home.

However, thousands of parents across the country are not registered and that means they potentially face prosecution.

Governments have been reluctant to take legal action, but in a landmark case last October, Bob Osmark from the Home Schooling Association of Queensland was prosecuted for not registering with the Home Education Unit to home school his 13-year-old daughter.

Mr Osmark had home-schooled his nine children.

He was charged under the Queensland Education Act that says parents have to enrol children of compulsory school age in a school, or register them for home schooling.

Mr Osmark was found guilty and fined $300 plus costs.

“I didn’t register with the Home Education Unit. I refused to do that because I see education as something of a parental right,” he said.

“We as parents know and love our children best. It’s not some cold faceless bureaucrat in the education department that knows what’s best for your child.

“Many home-schooling families kind of do it secretly because they fear Education Queensland taking legal steps against them and so forth, sending police to the door and that kind of thing.”

Underground education

There are 942 children registered with the Home Schooling Unit this year, but Mr Osmak believes there may be another 10,000 home schooling underground in Queensland.

During the past decade the home-schooling community has boomed, thanks to the internet and the availability of how-to-do-it kits and mail-order curricula.

At a get-together of home schoolers in a suburban park in Brisbane, one mother, Cindy, said she was about to start home schooling her son but was afraid of the paperwork involved.

“I’m not planning (on registering) because of the work involved,” she said.

“I’m not very organised and disciplined in that sense so that would be a big thing for me to undertake.”

Cindy is one of a large number of underground home schoolers but the secrecy and distrust has made it difficult for researchers to get hard data on whether home schooling produces a better or worse education.

“There is this sense of distrust; this general sense that ‘the Government doesn’t tell us what we need to know. It’s like they don’t want us to exist’,” said Glenda Jackson, who did her PhD on home schooling at Monash University.

“We can’t find the families to do a population sample testing that’s even, and when you interview, when you’re doing research with these parents, they can be very suspicious about who you are and why you’re doing the research.”

Why home school?

The Tasmanian Home Education Advisory Council recently asked its 600 registered parents why they decided to home school in the first place.

Seventeen per cent said the main reason was religion, nearly half listed philosophical reasons, while 27 per cent were not happy with the local school and 7 per cent had children with special needs.

Education Queensland did a similar voluntary survey in 2002 and found 20 per cent of parents listed religion as the main reason for home schooling and 21 per cent said it was because they were not happy with the local school.

In the United States, Stanford University sociologist Rob Reich said that underlying those reasons was often a deep distrust of authority.

“I know plenty of home-schoolers who would still home school even if they had an exceptional public school right next door to them,” said Mr Reich.

“They’re simply opposed in principle to state authority over their children, which they extend not only to a school environment, but even to state hospitals or regulations of another sort.”

The challenge now for education departments around Australia is to get home-schooling parents to agree to some form of monitoring of their children’s education.

“Standards exist for a reason and they’re about the kids not about the parents and their ideas about what they should do,” said the acting manager of the Queensland Home Education Unit, Hanne Worsoe.

“That’s why we live in a civil society that provides that capacity to represent children and to monitor their educational needs. If people aren’t registered I’d say you’re breaking the law, and if you’re doing the right thing by your kids you’ve got nothing to hide.”

From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-28/thousands-of-parents-illegally-home-schooling/3798008

Photo: Growing trend: home schooling has boomed over the past decade. (Background Briefing: Ian Townsend)

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https://hef.org.nz/getting-started-2/

and

https://hef.org.nz/exemptions/