DOI: 10.3726/9781916704664.003.0001
1. Identify three reasons why parents might choose homeschooling and consider how they might be affected by experience in a classroom.
2. Reflect critically on what aspects of the classroom culture and environment may impact the choice to homeschool.
3. Critically examine your own experiences with students with additional needs in your classes. How would this student be affected by their parents’ choice to homeschool?
4. Consider the notion of analogous education. How might it explain the choice of homeschooling?
This book is about teachers who are parents and choose to homeschool from an Australian perspective, as both authors live, work, and home educate in Australia. While there is a lot of research in the USA, in Australia, in the UK, in New Zealand, in Canada, and in other places homeschooling is legal (parts of Europe, parts of Asia) focused on the choice of homeschooling, questions around who does it and why, the philosophy behind it (the spectrum from unschooling to school at home) and the outcomes (particularly in the USA, questions around where homeschoolers go when they “finish” or “graduate”), there is not much on parents who homeschool. Beyond that question, we are interested in parents who are also qualified and/or experienced teachers, whatever that qualification and experience might be. There is no research on how teachers who choose to homeschool, and anecdotal and even government data in certain judications (Queensland Government: Department of Education, 2023) suggest this group is growing, come to the choice of homeschooling and how they experience the choice of homeschooling with their children. In this book, we look at the ways teacher-parents who homeschool talk about that experience. We are interested in four key questions:
1. What do teachers who homeschool bring to their experience of homeschooling?
2. Why might teachers who homeschool choose a particular style that is aligned with their teaching training?
3. Our experiences of teaching and our reflexive practice changed as a result of our experiences of homeschooling. To what extent does that change reflect the experiences of other homeschooling teachers?
4. What do their decisions to leave the education system tell us about what is happening with the current mainstream system?
These four key questions lead to the need to define some important concepts:
1. What does it mean to homeschool?
2. How do we categorise homeschool?
3. What styles of homeschooling are there?
4. Is homeschooling part of mainstream education, or is it in the shadows?
5. Analogous education.
In what follows in this chapter, we address these key points. These points allow us to explore the experiences of teachers who homeschool and how they approach their children’s experiences of learning.
Homeschooling is defined as the education of the child outside of a formal institution like a school (English & Gribble, 2021). Unlike with other forms of education, such as distance education and part-time school, homeschooling parents are wholly responsible for the education of their children, and that education is independent of teachers. While they may utilise other forms of education as part of their homeschooling journey (including private tutoring, music education, sports), the parents curate the whole educational experience, and implement most of the educational experiences that are required to provide that child with a well-rounded education.
We use the term “homeschooling” here in this book; however, we acknowledge that the term is problematic. One of the problems with the term is that most registering bodies, in Australia (Queensland Government: Department of Education, 2023) and around the world (Lees & Nicholson, 2021), prefer the term home education. Home education is preferred because it conveys more of the nuance of the approach. We can also include the many varied types of education that happen in a homeschool setting, with minimal correlation to the traditional idea of the term “school.” As we discuss below, there are many alignments between other educational movements. For our purposes, we frame the discussion in relation to shadow education but suggest a new term to categorise it as analogous education, and homeschooling. However, we are using the term “homeschooling” because of its relationship to popular notions of what a home educator is and does, where the child receives their “schooling” and “education.” We use the term “school” in its older iteration, meaning “to learn;” interestingly, its original meaning was from the Greek and means “leisure.” The word also has links to multitude, which, in relation to the growth of the movement, is our little joke on the term.
The link to the Greek term, “scholē,” or leisure, is important in this context. Schooling, the school years, are a time when children should be given the opportunity to figure out what they are interested in, what they want to know and who they want to be. It is a time that should be a distance from economic necessity (Bourdieu, 1984) that will facilitate that discovery. However, as many researchers have noted (Luthar et al., 2020), schooling has become less and less “leisurely” over the past 30 years. With the rise in competitive schooling (Jabbar et al., 2022), competition is as much between schools as it has been between individuals enrolled in schools (Luthar et al., 2020). Along with this competition has been an increased focus on testing (Au, 2022), and this testing emphasis has led to a decreased emphasis on experimentation (Rutkowski, 2001), on learning in innovative ways (Kavanagh & Fisher-Ari, 2020) and has seen the curriculum shrink (Yandall, Doecke & Abdi, 2020). As two of our parents, Madeline and Cathy, said in their interviews, as well as Gemma noted in her discussion, which we will come to. For example, Madeline and Cathy both bemoaned the emphasis on academics and, in particular, Maths and Sciences, without any focus on the Arts and other subjects that their children really loved and enjoyed. There is some evidence, in our data as well as in the authors’ own stories, that children who prefer to work in a creative way, and are looking for the space to draw, to paint, to sculpt and to read, are more likely to find the focus on Maths and Sciences stifling and preferred the opportunity to offer more creativity in their homeschooling settings (see also Fisher, 2023).
With this shrinking of curriculum, there has been a reduction in subjects that are not “valued,” such as the Arts (Rabkin & Hedberg, 2011), and even English language instruction has changed (Menken, 2008). Madeline talked about this problem in her interview. There is a distinct shift in schools and classrooms with more emphasis on subjects that have fewer creative outlets and subjects that rely on strong underlying language and number skills. Kettler et al. (2018) suggest there are benefits to creativity in the classroom, such as problem-solving skills in both the educational and personal setting. Robinson (2006) stated that creativity was as important in education as literacy, and that failure to teach the creative subjects was just as detrimental as not teaching maths and sciences. Gemma’s story suggests many homeschoolers would agree.
There has also been a view that teachers are suddenly required to “parent” (Bleazby, 2011), with research (Drane, Vernon & O’Shea, 2020) suggesting young people require more time to learn skills and attitudes that were previously taught in the home. As such, there is a lot of pressure on schools to do more (Bleazby, 2011) with less (Bleazby, 2011), and parents are increasingly unhappy with the offering of their local schools (Wenham, Dinn & Eaves, 2021). School satisfaction, among parents (Hamlin & Cheng, 2020) and teachers (Smith & Holloway, 2020), has been decreasing. Violet talked about how that conundrum affected her as a teacher and how it influenced her choice to homeschool. Nobody seems to be particularly satisfied with the services offered by schools.
To explore the issue of dissatisfaction with schooling, we will start by telling our own stories of being teachers who homeschool our own children.
I am a homeschooling mum, my children have never been to school, they just flatly refused to go. And, by “wouldn’t go” I mean, absolutely, flatly, feet-stomping, crying uncontrollably refused. My oldest child has refused school from the beginning and was the most vocal about not wanting to go, probably because it was she who would have been the first to go, and she was the one I invested the most time trying to convince to go to school. We visited so many schools in my quest to get her to go. Most of them were alternative schools; there was a one-teacher school, a community school, a Montessori school and a Steiner school. Nope, nope, nope and nope. I’m now at the end of the journey with her; she’s almost at the age where she can get herself ready to go to university and work out a pathway into university. We are registered, as it is the law, and we’ve (so far) been really lucky with the registration process; I’ve never had one rejected. I think that’s because I’m a teacher. The benefit of being a teacher who homeschools is in (1) the capacity to speak “department” in planning documents, (2) the capacity to speak “department” in reporting and (3) the capacity to see how to get into university. I have the added benefit of being a teacher educator, so my knowledge of university pathways is greater than that of many teachers.
To report, I use the proforma the department provides because I just want the process to be easy and to try to do what I can to ensure my child is able to keep homeschooling. There is a real fear in the community, which we saw during the review in Queensland that happened in 2024, and I share that fear of being refused homeschooling, even though it is my legal right as a parent to choose to homeschool any of my children.
My oldest child is the one I’ll talk about. It’s her experiences I’d like to explore here. I register properly and legally, and I feel that speaking of “department” in planning documents helps to make sure registration requirements are easy to meet. For example, I’ve always used references to literature to show how my child learns. Similarly, in the planning, I use teacher scripts to demonstrate to the department that there is an alignment between what they understand education (synonymous with school) to look like and the education my child has experienced for reporting purposes and will experience in the next year of homeschooling. I rely heavily on school language to produce the report. I have always used the codes in the curriculum, called content descriptors, to show the learning that should be achieved in the year level in the three areas of the report, English/Maths/another area of the curriculum.
The approach I have always taken is very teacherly, if more eclectic and less school-like than my experience of education as a teacher in a traditional setting. For example, while I do use workbooks, and my daughter does music examinations set by the Education Department, we only do an hour a day, and it’s my child’s choice when we do the work and if she proposes another way to cover content, we can do that. I have much more freedom than I would in a school where the curriculum would force my hand. My daughter talks with her friends about schooling, what they do, how they learn, what they’re learning and so on, and I see it’s much more casual and relaxed, more driven by her (if not in content but in time and approach) than her friends get in their schools with their teachers. Especially now that she’s high school age, the kids she hangs out with, the ones who do go to school, have a completely different experience of being directed, not allowed to self-direct, than she does. And, they have to do subjects they either report hating or report finding really useless, and they often say their experiences are uninspiring and pointless. We don’t have that experience.
Why do I approach homeschooling in a more “teacherly” fashion than if I want my child to have a self-directed experience? I do it because I want the reports to pass, so, by using the language of syllabuses and curriculum documents, I am desperately trying to convey to the regulator that this child is receiving a high-quality education, because I have used the curriculum documents which the department uses in their schools. I write feedback in a conversational style that would be recognisable to teachers who have engaged in moderation meetings and verification of samples in schools, and, through this approach, I hope to again convey that I am doing the school work the department prefers when they come to determine if the registration and reporting requirements have been met.
Homeschooling is a choice that my child has made. She has many friends, and all her cousins, who attend school. She has said to me in no uncertain terms that there is no way she wants to ever set foot in a school as a school student; she simply does not want to go. However, if she asked to go to school, I would send her.
For me, there are also influences and experiences in schools that I do not want her to have. For example, an aunt relayed how, in a very nice suburban school, my nephew was shown pornography on a phone that the school hadn’t “taken away,” and this had happened at lunchtime in the playground. My nephew was eight at the time.
As it stands, my homeschooling journey is almost at an end. She will go to a training college soon and do some study there with a view to developing a portfolio of learning that demonstrates her ability to go to university. She will be able to get a tertiary entrance score, called an ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank), through this process and get into university like a schooled student who will have an ATAR from their school learning. She also completes music exams, which not only shows learning, but also contributes to university entrance as it allows her to get to a level that will improve her ATAR. My child has made it very clear she wants to go to university and have a professional career.
I consider myself an “accidental” homeschooler, and I have an eclectic style. While I have never sent my child to school, I did not intend to homeschool. It’s the choice that my child has made, not me.
Rebecca’s story introduces two homeschooling categories, the accidentals and the deliberates. Far from reflecting the experiences in other countries, the focus on the child (rather than religious adherence or ideology) and the experiences in school are likely to drive homeschool choice in Australia. The decision to homeschool is found to largely be driven by parents’ perceptions of schools (as not working properly), and the child’s lack of “fit” with the school, rather than in the US, for instance, where categories are much more likely to reflect parents’ beliefs (see Van Galen, 1991). She’s described herself as an “accidental” homeschooler and an “eclectic.” In what follows, those terms are explained.
There are several layers to categorising homeschooling, which we will discuss. We’ll start with why people choose it, the accidentals of our author’s story. Then, we’ll talk about whether it’s part of the shadow education movement. Shadow education is often associated with tutoring and is heavily relied on in Australia to solve education issues. It was even funded by the Victorian Department of Education in the wake of the pandemic to help get students up to grade level. Interestingly, the Queensland Department of Education’s own publications tend to describe homeschooling as shadow education, in spite of it not being private tutoring (or private tutoring lite). Shadow education is used to refer to supplementary services that support, not replace, school. It may be that calling homeschooling supplemental education is a way to say it’s not important or worthwhile or equivalent to schooling. We challenge that notion in the section that follows our discussion of supplemental education.
English (2021a; 2021b, 2023), in her work on Australian homeschoolers, has asserted that the majority of homeschoolers in Australia are “accidental,” meaning that they did not intend to choose homeschooling and are choosing it as either a last resort or to heal the child with significant school trauma.
There has been much critical work in relation to the choice of homeschooling. Much of this critical conversation looks at cultural and social differences. For example, Lowden (1993) argued that the Christian fundamentalism element evident in early literature was inappropriate to the UK context. Due to the demographics of Australia’s population, it is likely that this will not apply in this country either due to declining religiosity (Hughes, 2010). Similarly, Stevens (2001) described the two groups as focusing on earth, “earth-based,” and heaven, “heaven-based.” Rothermel (2003) has argued these studies and others, including Apostoleris (1994), make a flawed case at [at or as?] a dichotomy, what is termed a “dualistic taxonomy of home education choice” between the religious and non-religious homeschool families. In their study, Apostoleris (1994) argued the choice was more about content and method than ideology and methodology; however, English (2020) has argued research shows the binary categories of choice are “universal.” Nemer (2002) suggested that there was so much convergence between religious and non-religious homeschoolers that the groups were too flexible to hold much meaning in relation to understanding the drive to homeschool. For Nemer, most homeschool families draw from both groups. Jolly and Matthews (2017) agreed, stating Nemer’s (2002) approach provided much-needed flexibility within Van Galen’s (1991) original classification.
Attempting to address this, English’s (2021a; 2021b; Moir & English, 2022; English, Campbell & Moir, 2023) work in Australia has tended to categorise the homeschool choice as either accidental or deliberate. For English (2021a; 2021b), accidentals did not make a deliberate choice. In order to address criticisms that “accidental” suggests unserious or “foolish,” she used the term to connote that the choice was “forced” on the family. By contrast, she used the term “deliberate” to describe those families whose intention had always been to homeschool, whether the intention was religious, a-religious, ideological, or any other category.
As such, “deliberate” suggested that there was a time taken to make the choice because the families could see problems before they occurred. They would have fitted into both categories of Van Galen’s (1991) work, as they were somewhat ideologically opposed to certain aspects of schooling (in particular, how they managed neurodivergent students) as well as pedagogues (in that they thought school was not really an effective means of educating young people). By contrast, the “accidentals” were forced into making a choice; most were choosing homeschooling in real time as the child’s experiences of schooling meant the reality of staying in school unravelled around them. For many of these families, it may be that school refusal/school can’t be a factor. The accidentals were chosen in response to the child’s experiences on the ground, mostly while they were enrolled in schools, which aligns with data showing the main growth in the secondary phase of learning, suggesting much of the growth of homeschooling is in the previously schooled population. These families find themselves home educating by accident, not by design, showing they are accidental home educators. They weren’t in any way ideologically opposed to schooling, quite the opposite, growth in homeschooling enrolment in the secondary, and senior phase of learning in many cases suggested they are home educating in response to schools’ failure to meet the needs of the family in relation to a child’s education.
Unlike accidental home education families, the other group, deliberates, were always going to home educate. These families may be both ideologically and pedagogically opposed to schools, the institutional approach to learning and the state’s authority to tell their children what it means to be educated. Most of the children in these families, English (2021a) suggested, had not ever attended school, so their children had no direct experiences of schooling; rather, her work suggested, their beliefs and experiences of schooling as a child (or a teacher) led to their decision to homeschool. These families tend to demonstrate what Van Galen (1991) described as a “full ideological commitment to home education … sometime after the initial decision to teach their children at home” (p. 67) or “believed that their children learned in unique ways that could not be accommodated by formal schools” (p. 72).
English (2021) noted how families may take on the responsibility to educate and do it all themselves and place all the pressure on themselves because all other options were found to be unsuitable or unsuccessful for their child. It may be due to the child’s special education need (such as Autism), psychological need (such as trauma or anxiety), or in relation to bullying (Kuntzman & Gaither, 2013), or some other problem in schools. However, this risk does not need to be directly felt; it may be perceived. For instance, some parents may perceive the school as a risk for their child, either because of the parents’ experiences of school when they were students or because of their experiences of school as teachers, when they were teaching their own classes.
In Rebecca’s story above, she described herself as an “eclectic” homeschooling parent to describe the learning that happened in her home. There are many different styles of learning in a homeschooling family. We argue homeschooling exists on a spectrum from highly unstructured to highly structured.
When the term home-schooling or home education is used, it encompasses a wide range of pedagogies and curricular choices that are decided on by the parent educator. Much broader than that of a mainstream approach. These choices are generally made based on a family’s beliefs and opinions and are not randomly selected. The variety of styles and philosophies that are often (but not always) talked about by home-educating families, but many reject labels altogether and just say they’re homeschoolers. Below, we outline many approaches (but not all) seen in the homeschooling approach. We chose to focus on those approaches most often seen in the literature on homeschooling families’ choices of a style.
This pedagogy of home learning is an approach that recreates the mainstream, traditional school day in the home. We use both the terms mainstream and traditional schooling because different literatures use these two terms. They seem to be interchangeable and refer to school as it is stereotypically understood and would be familiar to a non-homeschooling family (textbooks, structured day, sat at a desk, key learning areas, and assessments such as national assessments for literacy and numeracy). The idea of repackaging the structure of school life in the home environment is implied by the term “traditional” homeschooling.
It is familiar. Textbooks and workbooks are what the general population grew up on… the traditional schoolroom approach is one of the easiest methods to implement and use.
The traditional learning that resembles a school day feels most familiar for both the learner and the parent educator. The initial time in homeschooling is often characterised by a “traditional” approach with parents attempting to replicate school at home; for many, that’s all they know. But it usually doesn’t last. Parents are recreating what is familiar while finding it does not work without the structure of school (teachers, principal, departments of education, the other attributes of school that make it work including bells and assemblies), as such, they tend to end up abandoning it because they are already unsure about school being effective and are already developing new beliefs around educating their child/ren. It is often in this initial phase of a new homeschool family that they start to question their own opinions and beliefs around how education should and can look for a child. From here, parent educators’ confidence grows, and they may choose to begin to explore other learning styles and philosophies.
The classical pedagogy of homeschooling refers to ancient philosophers Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. The classical method of learning attempts to emulate the ways of these great minds through a modern practice based on ancient ideas. “Young people should be taught to ask questions rather than just be given information to memorize.” (Robinson, 2013, p. 29). Home-educated students’ reasoning skills are developed in depth with the end goal of producing deep critical thinkers. To have the “ability to take part in the great conversation and make a contribution towards our common life” (Robinson, 2013, p. 198). There are three phases or methods of learning in the Classical method that make up the trivium. The child/ren move through the trivium phases as they age and develop their skills in each phase: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Once the trivium is mastered, students move onto the quadrivium – astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, and music.
Grammar: (knowledge) The first stage lays the foundation for language, beginning from four years through to nine years old. The home learning student will learn phonics, grammar rules, spelling rules, math facts, historical facts, scientific facts, and more. The facts build the foundation for the next stage of the trivium. It is “intended to teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of learning, before they begin to apply them to ‘subjects’ at all.” (Sayers, 1947)
Logic: (understanding) The second stage, beginning around ten years old, focuses on when a child begins to ask “why?” This is where the home-educated child/ren begin to acknowledge and appreciate cause and effect, and develop ideas around more abstract thinking. Analysis of what is being read begins here, and thus begins critical thinking skills.
Rhetoric: (wisdom) around twelve years old, the home-educated child/ren uses both grammar (knowledge and facts) and logic (understanding) and applies them to their own unique, original thoughts.
Many classical homeschool families and programs include study of the Bible and have strong Christian foundations, referred to as classical Christian education (Arendash, 2023). Religion is generally at the centre of the learning, with the other classical topics working in harmony with the family’s religious beliefs.
To understand the practices and principles of Charlotte Mason homeschooling, we must look back to the late nineteenth century to Mason’s first publication: Home Education: The Training and Education of Children Under Nine . Without a doubt, Charlotte Mason (1842–1923) was an educator ahead of her time. She developed an educational philosophy that spread throughout Britain and the US in the late 19th century (de Bellaigue, 2015). It is still followed today by many private mainstream schools, but more importantly, it has a large homeschool following. Mason’s educational philosophy entails “three educational instruments – the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas” (Mason, 2013, p. 32). Studies include religion, literature, history, language, arts, and science, often with a nature focus. There is often also a strong Biblical focus in Charlotte Mason, and it is used by many Christian families.
Children following the Montessori educational framework work at an individual pace, and there are certain values for the child to follow. The Montessori environment is calm and quiet, and offers the child a chance to learn at their own pace. While the child has most autonomy in what they choose to engage with, it is a very organised process behind the scenes. These activities are far from surface-level “busy-ness” and are designed to build and develop on previously learned skills to eventually develop mastery of that skill. Behind the activity that appears simple has been a lot of research, observation and planning. The choices in materials and lessons on offer follow a pattern that was designed by Maria Montessori in order for the child to fully develop that skill. Practical life skills are an important component of the Montessori method.
The Montessori method follows the ideas of Maria Montessori (1870–1952), an Italian physician and educator. Putting her educational ideas aside, she was, in her time, a significant advocate for women’s rights and was thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Montessori method entails supporting the full development of a human being. It is a multi-faceted approach that looks beyond textbooks for learning. The room in which a child learns is set up differently from conventional ideals. In the homeschool environment, the whole house can accommodate this idea. Furniture is child-sized, low, and in muted tones to reflect nature (Lilliard 2016). The materials chosen to be on display are curated and rotated in the Montessori space, and the space is never overpacked. Children are expected to return the materials to the space just as they found it, taking care of the space as a collective.
Project or unit-based methods of homeschooling are immersive and offer an integrated curriculum approach, pushing a transdisciplinary approach whereby subjects are fully immersed within the one topic. These units and/or projects often have a real-world approach to them.
The unit study approach allows a family to be structured or flexible in their method of teaching while still covering the bases on academic subjects. Using a single theme for planning activities and lessons offers the teacher and students the opportunity to use their various interests and passions to discover, learn, and retain the subject matter (Suarez, 2006, p. 89).
These topics can be chosen by the child or family and then adapted to suit multiple age levels of learning in the one household. A depth of investigation often takes place, and by giving the child/ren autonomy over the topic, they develop intrinsic motivation to learn more. The choices are almost endless. These units can be created by the parent or bought as a package. The local library can be an excellent source for all homeschool learners, but particularly for integrated units. “The unit study method of home education has fringe benefits that go beyond teaching the ‘connectedness’ of things… There is a sense of family connectedness in addition to factual connectedness” Suarez (2006). The parent essentially guides the child to the answer rather than dictating what is to be learned.
The term unschooling was first used by school teacher John Holt in the 1960s. The term originally described how a child learned without attending school (Suarez 2006). “Unschooling is a variation of homeschooling where, instead of following a set curriculum, children learn through everyday life experiences” (Riley, 2020, p. 19). Unschooling families do not schedule lessons or follow a program, nor do they have set assignments. Instead, they are learning through experience and life. The child often plans their own day and experiences, and the parent follows, guides and asks questions. It is therefore often interest-based and can take place at home, in a park, on the road, while travelling, at the beach, wherever learning can be explored. “Being an unschooling parent is almost like being a librarian” (Riley, 2020, p. 68). Children ask and explore, and parents gather resources to share with the child.
The Steiner or Waldorf education was designed by Austrian Philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). The role of the parent education in a Steiner Waldorf household is sculpting the environment from materials and equipment that harken back to the natural world in which the family is located through the relationships with materials and between each other in the family (Nicol, 2012). The essential principles to following Steiner’s philosophy are “care for the environment and nourishment of the senses, creative and artistic experiences, child-initiated free play, the development of healthy will activity, protection for the forces of childhood: gratitude, reverence, wonder, working with rhythm, repetition and reverence, imitation and the child at the centre” (Nicol 2012 p14). Steiner encouraged teaching to be “creative like art” (Dahlin, 2017, p.83). Steiner focusses on where the child is at rather than the traditional age and grade-based approaches. It takes a creative approach and “in primary school, the core approach is through artistic presentation of material…which promotes engagement, inspires deep learning, and supports developing imaginations” (Steiner Education Australia, n.d.).
Families who choose to homeschool with a Steiner focus will focus on how learning can be done through craft, art, dance, drama, and creation. There is an emphasis on utilising lots of natural play products such as wool, silk, wood, cotton, etc. Modern Steiner approaches do not utilise digital technologies until high school.
Faith-based homeschool families are following and practising the beliefs and ideals of their own religion. Faith is embedded in home education and is the overarching theme of learning. There are many programs families can choose to follow based on their own religion, and often many social groups to be a part of that share those same principles. “Children are to grow in their understanding of the principles of the subjects they are taught and then, to be exercised in their own individual reasoning in, by, and with those principles” (Suarez, 2006).
Australian Christian Homeschooling (n.d.) offers such a curriculum planned and mapped so that “scripture and Biblical principles are woven into the curriculum, ensuring students are not exposed to humanistic teaching which conflicts with the Bible.”
As mentioned above in relation to the traditionalist approach, the eclectic model often comes once homeschool families have tried a few different learning styles. One of our authors, Rebecca, described herself as eclectic because she combines a few different styles. They indirectly create a learning environment and method that is right for the child or family as a whole unit. Eclectic methods borrow from other approaches, for example, perhaps an art focus from Steiner and the methodology behind Montessori, with some unit focus as well. These melting pots of individualised approaches are unique from family to family.
Just like a grand buffet, there is a huge variety of great programs, courses, books, and curricula in the homeschool market, each of which appeals to different learning and teaching styles, family schedules, level of teacher involvement, and more. Smorgasbord homeschooling allows us to pick and choose what works best for our family.
The choices in approaches to homeschooling are vast, and therefore, when choosing to follow an eclectic mix, one has to sift through them all to find the “gems” that work for one’s own family.
Shadow education has been a way departments of education in Australia have described homeschooling. In their negotiations with the community, they often describe homeschoolers as a “shadow education.” In this section, we dispute that and try to show why shadow education is not an appropriate term. Instead of shadow education, we propose a new term, which we call analogous education, because we think that homeschooling runs alongside school education and has some analogies with regular school, but is not quite the same. When parents have a child who struggles in mainstream, one of the strategies they employ is to employ a tutor and move to what is termed “shadow education” (Zhang & Bray, 2020). There can be a debate about whether homeschooling sits in the same place as “shadow education,” as many of the issues that lead parents to choose private tutoring are the same as those that lead to homeschooling. However, there are differences, in spite of governments describing homeschooling as a shadow education or a shadow homeschool movement.
Shadow education, as Zhang and Bray (2020) noted, has its origins in the last century, but has been increasingly popularised in the post-COVID-19 pandemic times, much like homeschooling; it’s grown with the changes we have noted post-pandemic. Significantly for this book, the COVID-19 pandemic was a point for many to turn to homeschooling as a means of ameliorating educational disadvantage, it was also a huge driver to shadow education, particularly private tutoring, as parents in both cases noted educational problems that had been hidden by their children being in classrooms for the majority of their learning. As the Australian curriculum does not allow time to go back and revisit concepts, many things may be missed. For example, in maths, if a child is not good at times tables, they may find algebra difficult. It is the lack of a solid foundation that drives parents to shadow education (usually in the form of outside hours, private tutoring) and also to homeschooling as they attempt to make up for learning losses. At the time, schools were opening and closing doors as per government mandates, and schooling from a device became the new norm (Moir & English, 2022). It was a new time for the world and a new time for education. Gemma’s child was in mainstream school prep in 2020 and felt this educational disadvantage after the school temporarily closed its doors after only six weeks. Gemma began filling in the days for her child with additional reading, number work and learning of the Arts using her teaching background to its full advantage. In other words, it is an educational disadvantage [or gap] that drives many parents to shadow education (Zhang & Bray, 2020).
Shadow or supplemental education (both terms are often used interchangeably in government documents) is instruction in subjects that “count,” such as mathematics, languages, sciences or any other examinable subject. It is not additional to the school curriculum, such as music, sports, or arts. In most cases, supplemental or shadow education is not undertaken for the enjoyment of the child; rather, it is focused on academic achievement, supplementing, privately, the child’s achievement in relation to university entrance and career pathways. In spite of these obvious differences to homeschooling, the term “shadow home education” and “shadow homeschooling” have started to appear in government circulars (Queensland Parliamentary Committee, 2024) in relation to the families who do not meet regulatory obligations. More on that later, but it is usually used to refer to parents who aren’t registering their homeschooling with the regulatory authority in their state or territory and are homeschooling quite literally “in the shadows.”
Homeschooling and shadow education do have a lot in common. In many cases (English, 2021a), parents end up homeschooling not because they prefer it, but because it is the only choice left to them, because school hasn’t worked. Much like shadow education, it is a recognition of a learning loss or an issue with learning that leads to homeschooling in many cases. As such, it may be supplemental to the mainstream or regular education system. As noted with the juku system in Japan, which facilitates a second chance to young people who’ve failed Japan’s competitive education system, in Australia, as elsewhere (see Havik & Ingul, 2021), the lack of success in the mainstream system is the reason most families choose homeschooling. In addition to the academic issues, the child’s difficulties and/or distress in the classroom can also lead to social issues such as bullying, even by teachers (English et al., 2023) because of a frustration with the child’s inability to grasp concepts that have been missed or lost. Parents often pull their children out of school and homeschool them to catch them up, showing that, in many of the same terms as the juku system in Japan, homeschooling is supplemental to the mainstream system, it is a system that acts more than supplementing, rather it’s a catch-all system that collects students who have not found success or not found their place in schools. As noted in recent Australian research (Dooley et al., 2023), private tutoring operates in much the same terms as homeschooling in that it facilitates a catch-up for students who were failing or falling through the mainstream school cracks.
Some researchers have criticised the private nature of homeschooling for many of the same qualities as private schooling and private tutoring. For instance, Apple (2020) noted that homeschooling families remove children from the mainstream schooling system and teach them in a way that meets their needs without any concern for the greater good of bringing children’s skills to a public school. However, the private issue is not so much about the removal of young people from schools into homeschooling because of an advantage that may be provided by elite education (see Apple, 2020), rather, in much the same terms as the supplemental education suggested in the research into private tutoring, it is to supplement the education provided in schools so that all young people can experience success in schooling, even those who were refusing to attend school because of bullying (English, Campbell & Moir, 2023) or other issues that meant that school was refused (Slater, Burton & McKillop, 2022). Further, many homeschooling families use private tutoring to supplement their children’s education (Dooley, 2020).
Homeschooling, like private tutoring and shadow education, is academic. Its purpose is to provide academic instruction that can lead to the same jobs and careers and tertiary study that are required by parents who choose schools. Homeschooled students are said to achieve as well or better (Ray, 2021) than their conventionally schooled peers. Homeschooled students go on to a variety of different jobs and careers (McCabe, Beláňová & Machovcová, 2021). As such, the education they experience in their education journeys does not preclude them from also accessing high-level academic achievement in tertiary education, jobs and careers. It is supplemental to the mainstream school system in that homeschool parents step up to provide an education where schools have not been able to meet that child’s educational needs. Many of these young people go back to, or enrol in, schools at some point in their journey (see Jackson, 2021). As such, in much the same ways that private tutoring acts as a supplemental, private system to assist in the academic instruction of young people falling through the cracks, so too does homeschooling. Clearly, there is some alignment between private tutoring/shadow education and homeschooling. Both have grown significantly, particularly since the pandemic. Below, we provide a different categorisation of homeschooling. However, success in university, in jobs, and in careers is rarely the goal. For example, as Kunzman and Gaither (2020, p. 304):
[H]omeschooling [continues] to challenge modern conceptions of schooling, education, and the family. Conventional categories of schooling, curriculum, and achievement will continue to blur, shifting not only participants’ conceptions of education but very likely broader society’s as well (Lees, 2011). Homeschooling … pushes us to consider … the purposes of education more broadly.
While there is some alignment of homeschooling with shadow education, it is, unlike school and shadow education through private tutoring, not focused entirely or exclusively on academics. Getting great scores on standardised tests or a brilliant university entrance score isn’t the end goal of homeschooling. This suggests it doesn’t belong in the category of private schooling (see Apple, 2020) or private tutoring. We argue that homeschooling can be categorised as “analogous education.” There are some similarities to the mainstream system, but there are more differences. The outcome of educating a child for a career and academic learning is where mainstream and homeschooling approaches diverge, as mainstream education is very focused on outcomes, while it’s unlikely that parents factor outcomes so much into their choice to homeschool. Neuman and Oz (2020) compared homeschooling and mainstream education through the lens of parents who had removed their children from the mainstream system. They found that parents noted unique differences between the two systems. “Schools focus on imparting knowledge rather than teaching high-order cognitive skills, and encourage uniform, standardised, inflexible learning” (Neuman and Oz, 2020, p. 2). Homeschool offers a child-centred approach where the child works at their own pace through self-led inquiries with an interdisciplinary approach, sparking intrinsic motivation, and flexible learning options to suit the child and family (Riley, 2020). By contrast, traditional or mainstream approaches tend to expect the child to meet the curriculum, not the other way around. “Emphasis on high-stakes testing tilted the educational focus away from higher-level thinking and toward fundamental knowledge, rote memorisation of facts, and results-based learning” (Kettler et.al, 2018). With class sizes, there is one way to “learn” the content before the group as a whole moves onto the next concept suggested in the curriculum. As noted earlier, the term homeschooling is a wide umbrella term for a suite of approaches that can be applied to a child’s educational journey. By being in the home environment, adaptations to an original pedagogy or approach to learning can easily occur to meet the child’s needs as necessary. The child is not immobilised at a desk in a classroom to learn something one way only, usually from a book rather than from the real world. Neuman and Oz (2020, p. 13) argued that while both traditional mainstream and homeschooling have the similarities of educating children, they are in their own, unique category:
Homeschooling can be considered a solution to the education crisis. Furthermore, it might also be suggested that homeschooling is, in fact, a solution that is not included in either of the two categories described (within or outside the education system) but rather constitutes a unique third category of solutions to the education crisis.
As mentioned earlier, shadow education is supplemental to the education system (Bray 2009). By comparison, homeschooling is an alternative to the mainstream education system. As Bray notes in his definition, shadow education does not attempt to override or take over. It is effectively in the shadows; it sits behind the main education system. Homeschooling education does not do this. Rather, it sits alongside [the educational system] as a viable and legal alternative. However, it should be noted that the supplemental service that occurs (to the school system) when a family chooses to homeschool and remove their child from the mainstream system.
In terms of the relationship between the mainstream system and homeschooling, it can be said that homeschooling is analogous to the mainstream system in both form and function. They are not parallel to each other, moving in the same direction but the same distance apart. They are similar in some respects, with comparable differences, analogous.
Regardless of the style that is chosen, home education or homeschooling is one of the fastest-growing educational choices in Australia (Moir & English, 2022). We see the growth as evidence that it is an analogous education. It is operating alongside traditional schooling, is taking students from the mainstream population (much to the chagrin of the education departments), usually from government schools, and is often a stopgap on the journey where students return to school at some later stage (see Sheng, 2024). We do not have data on how many families use each approach, as it is not collected with any statistical instrument. What we do know is that the homeschooling community is growing in all states and territories, but its growth is most noticeable in Queensland, the third-largest state by population. This state is the one in which both authors live. There has been a 20 per cent increase over the past five years, with the 2022–2023 year seeing the primary school-aged numbers (aged between 4/5 and 10/11) grow by 152 per cent to 2023. The biggest growth in the numbers has been in the secondary and senior secondary phase of learning (students aged 11/12 to 17/18), with growth in the five years to 2023 reported at 262 per cent (Queensland Government: Department of Education, 2023). By the end of 2023, when the latest data was reported, there were even more homeschoolers, 11,314 (Queensland Government: Department of Education, 2024). Interestingly, the growth is highest between Year 8 and Year 9 (51% growth) and Year 10 and Year 11 (60% growth). None of our parents talked about these ages, so we could speculate that it is when the curriculum becomes more intense (the last year of middle school/the beginning of senior), and social pressures also change.
The growth in the number of families that homeschool in secondary education, especially the change between Years 8 and 9 and Years 10 and 11, implies that the state is experiencing a large outgrowth of homeschooling in the previously schooled population. As the students were enrolled in schools prior to their enrolment into home education, they were drawn from the population who had been in schools. Or, perhaps, it may be that they are quicker to abandon schools when encountering problems, or maybe they know the likely trajectory of the issues faced by their child and how the school system may approach helping that child manage their individual needs.
Interestingly, teachers are a group whose experiences of school may make them more likely to choose homeschooling for their own children. As such, it is likely that being a teacher, and having an outside experience of modern education, may be enough to make parents, who would otherwise choose, or even prefer, for education to be delivered in a school, choose home education.
In relation to the state the authors are from, Queensland, the data is not representative of the actual numbers of home educators in that state. There are a lot more students in Queensland who are home educating than these data suggest (Euka, nd; Johnno, nd). All states and territories set their own laws about education, which include the requirements to home educate. Each education act requires families to register their child for homeschooling. As such, if, as advocates suggest, the numbers are significantly lower than those reported, there are many families who are acting illegally when homeschooling and not meeting their obligations to report their child’s education. For this study, we did not ask our participants if they were registered or not. We wanted them to be able to speak freely and not worry about the legality of their choice.
Some data, produced by curriculum providers whose business is to sell academic resources to families who homeschool, popular with parents who want to minimise their workload in homeschooling, suggest around 50 per cent of families who are homeschooling are not registered (Euka, nd) and others, who support families and do not charge for their services, so they are likely to serve a wider population of homeschoolers and also be less focused on families who use curriculum (and are probably more likely to feel comfortable and confident registering) suggest the registration data from Queensland represent only about 20 per cent of registered homeschoolers, suggesting there are 80 per cent of families (Jonno, nd) who are not legally registered in Queensland. These data suggest that the true figure of homeschoolers in 2023 in Queensland is between ~21,000 and ~51,000.
As can be seen from inquiries into homeschooling that have occurred recently (see the Parliament of Queensland, 2024; Parliament of New South Wales, 2014; Jeffrey & Giskes, 2004), homeschooling is a private choice that is legal, in part, because of Australia’s long history of private educational provision (English, 2015). In each state and territory, the same government departments charged with overseeing both homeschooling and private schools are the education department, whose role includes the management and provision of state-based education. Homeschooled children’s success in standardised testing as well as in achieving university entrance was omitted from the main report (Parliament of New South Wales, 2014) but appears in the appendix of the inquiry documents (Parliament of New South Wales, 2014).
It may be that there is a fractious relationship between state departments of education, charged with managing and overseeing all forms of non-government school provision, and the non-government school options. Non-government schools are accused of taking funding away from government schools; however, there is no funding issue with homeschoolers. In Australia, homeschooled families receive no funding from the states, except for the textbook allowance given to all families with children of high school age. However, the absence of numbers from classrooms does affect funding, which is still maintained on a needs-based model which uses the number of students enrolled in each school and those students’ socio-economic status to determine funding (Warhurst 2012). As such, it may be that both private schools and other private options (such as distance education and homeschooling) affect government funding models because they provide no funding to education departments, but create more work because these departments must manage and oversee these education options. Further, how teachers who choose to homeschool are implicated in this situation is yet to be seen.
This chapter has introduced the home education or homeschool situation in Australia, with a particular emphasis on Queensland. It has been shown that there has been significant growth in homeschooling in the whole of Australia over the last five years. It has discussed the different styles of homeschooling and their origins. It has discussed the links between homeschooling and private tutoring. Finally, in relation to the number of families choosing it, it has drawn links to being a teacher, why teachers might choose homeschooling and the links between teachers leaving the profession and the rise in homeschooling. In addition, one of our authors’ stories has been shared, beginning to reveal the experience of teachers who choose homeschooling.
There are some study points to consider at the end of this chapter:
1. Social and economic circumstances might influence families’ disaffection with schooling, and it may also influence the ways that parents choose to home educate, even if they register.
2. It is interesting that there are authoritarian countries, such as China, that tolerate homeschooling while more liberal countries, such as Germany, actively disallow the practice.
3. Teachers identified the lack of creative subjects in schools as an issue, yet nobody seems to see how to fix it. If the community and teachers are aware that it’s affecting students’ experiences of schooling negatively, why might the government continue with its choice to privilege the more science and academic over the creative and physical?
4. Unschooling is often considered a radical option. Sudbury Valley Schools and A.S Neil’s Summerhill have been taking a similar approach for a while. Perhaps the radical is not so much in the approach as in its difference from mainstream.
5. Do you think that unschooling can be fully practised in a school setting?
Canaries in the Coalmine
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