Why now? Why is Home Education Gaining Momentum? -Melinda Harrington

Why now? Why is Home Education Gaining Momentum?

-Melinda Harrington

(There's a video made by Marnie about this topic down below after you've read this post, or you could skip to it straight away!)

The following table is from Information Sheets which are available on the website of  the VRQA (Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority). 

	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Registrations	3435	3718	3977	4461	4743
Year on year change	-	+ 283	+ 259	+ 484	+ 282
% Change	-	8%	7%	12%	6%

This table appears to indicate
that there has been a steady increase in the numbers of homeschooled children across Victoria throughout the past four years. The rate of change is relatively stable, with steady increases each year. 

According to the Information Sheet from January, 2017, there was no local data available as to the reasons for this steady increase in homeschooling numbers. The following observation was made:

"The VRQA does not collect data on reasons for home schooling but surveys of parents in Tasmania and Queensland give the main reasons as: philosophical, religion, discontent with local schools, and having children with special needs."

 

So why are families choosing to educate their children at home rather than send their children to school? Why now? What’s changed in the past few years? I’ll put my thoughts together here, and hopefully you can add your own ideas.

Reasons for Homeschooling.

• My child has been bullied at school and the teachers do nothing about it.
• My child has special learning needs due to his or her giftedness/disability/uniqueness and the school seems unable to meet those learning needs
• My child is unhappy at school and would rather be home
• We move around for work and it suits us better this way
• We believe in natural learning so educating at home works better for us
• We have strong beliefs/spirituality/values that our children are not taught or exposed to in mainstream school so homeschool suits us better
• We believe the best place for children to learn is with family
• We live a long way from a school so homeschool is the only other option

There are of course many other reasons for families choosing to educate their children at home. These are just the most common I have heard over the years.

 And finally, internet technology has made the task of home educating your child so much easier. There is an abundance of child friendly, 'educational' material on the internet.  Personally I have seen an exponential increase in educational internet resources throughout the past six years or so. 

What were your own reasons for starting to homeschool?
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