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Does Homeschooling Work?
Beverley Paine
For many, the unintended benefits of home educating experienced during the early months and years far outweigh the original reasons parents say motivated them to give it a go. I compiled this list many years ago national and international research including John Peacock's major Australian study, The Why and How of Home Education in Australia (more articles on the benefits of home education can be found at http://theeducatingparent.com/sitemap.html#benefitsanddisadvantages):
- closer family relationships, with children playing a more positive and significant role in family life, and an emphasis on family making skills;
- parental personal fulfilment and increased learning opportunities for parents as well as children;
- greater understanding of personal responsibility;
- natural fostering of co-operative and team behaviours;
- an empowering process for both parents and children;
- greater freedom from arbitrary time limits such as terms and year levels to pursue educational activities and interests;
- increased opportunity for one to one interaction with more skilled peers or parents, which lead to cognitive challenges and gains;
- children are able to ask more questions, with more time allowed for answers to be found, leading to increased motivation for learning;
- children and parents engage in more complex language in the home learning environment compared with classroom settings, and this improves the intellectual and language development of children;
- children have been shown to rate equal to or higher than average on standardised achievement tests;
- home educated children's self concept has been shown to be significantly higher than schooled children, indicating that home education does not socially deprive children but produces socially well adjusted young people;
- children are less peer oriented;
- increased involvement in community activities;
- greater attainment of independent learning skills, self-motivation and organisational abilities.
Schools promise these outcomes but fail to guarantee achievement for ALL students. Schools continue to fail students, citing many excuses: family problems, individual learning difficulties, lack of adequate resourcing, under-financing by funding bodies. Problems in classrooms persist decade after decade while politicians and bureaucrats continue to shift the blame and experiment without adequate evaluation processes in place.
For home educating parents failure is an unacceptable outcome. The drive to succeed in the home learning environment is very high, with parents continuously searching for better and more successful methods, resources and outcomes to improve their children's educational opportunities and to meet their individual learning needs. Unlike school teachers parents are directly accountable to the student, in an immediate way, every day. Problems with education are not left to fester indefinitely. Home education allows considerable flexibility in delivering excellence in education - flexibility schools can't match.
See the following articles for additional information :
You may like to read a couple of frequently asked question responses Beverley wrote in reply to some emailed questions:
If you want to know more about how Beverley and Robin home educated their children their book, Learning in the Absence of Education (a title picked by their then ten year old son) contains many essays on how their children learned to read, write, spell, how the family managed daily life, dealt with socialisation issues, etc.
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Beverley Paine with her children, and their home educated children, relaxing at home.
Together with the support of my family, my aim is to help parents educate their children in stress-free, nurturing environments. In addition to building and maintaing this website, I continue to create and manage local and national home educating networks, help to organise conferences and camps, as well as write for, edit and produce newsletters, resource directories and magazines. I am an active supporter of national, state, regional and local home education groups.
"You've been an inspiration to me, I love the way
you really listen to people." Vanessa
"Whenever I read your writing I always come away
with increased confidence in my ability to provide and
share a wonderful learning journey with my family!" Davina
"Your guidance, understanding, support and words of
wisdom changed our lives. We now offer support and
organise many homeschooling events for others." Lesley
"Thank you once again for your prompt and friendly service.
I am convinced that your books are going to add
quality and peace of mind to my journey of teaching my kids
at home! Just from studying your website, until almost
2am
in the morning, I 've been encouraged!" Louisa
"Thank you for all your many,many reassuring words
over many, many years. You probably don't know exactly how
valuable you are to the Australian Home Education community.
I've been reading your stuff for maybe 8 years or more now.
And I'm very grateful." Gythaa
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Welcome to the World of Home Education
and Learning without School!
We began educating our children in 1985, when our eldest was five. In truth, we had helped them learn what they need to learn since they were born. I am a passionate advocate of allowing children to learn unhindered by unnecessary stress and competition, meeting developmental needs in ways that suit their individual learning styles and preferences. Ours was a homeschooling, unschooling and natural learning family! There are hundreds of articles on this site to help you build confidence as a home educating family. We hope that your home educating adventure is as satisfying as ours was! Beverley Paine
3 ESSENTIAL STEP BY STEP GUIDES
Let experienced home educators Beverley, Tamara and April walk you through HOW to create a learning plan that builds on solid foundations that works for YOUR family AND ticks all the boxes for home educaton registration!
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Tap into Beverley's
experience
through her books
"Your books, your blogs helped me beyond words... they helped me to find comfort in knowing it is ok to choose exactly what is best for my family." Nisha
"Your books and information are mind blowing and already I am feeling good about this new experience." Diane
"Your guidance, understanding, support & words of wisdom changed our lives." Leslie
"I feel specially inspired by Beverley's words and, the more I read her comments, the more inspired I feel, since my need for support, respect for different parenting styles, and information are fully met." Marijo
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The information on this website is of a general nature only and is not intended as personal or professional advice. This site merges and incorporates 'Homeschool Australia' and 'Unschool Australia'.
The Educating Parent acknowledges the Traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Owners, the Custodians of Australia, and pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people viewing this website.
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Home education is a legal alternative
to school education in Australia.
State and Territory governments are responsible
for regulating home education and have different
requirements, however home educating families
are able to develop curriculum and learning programs
to suit the individual needs of their children.
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