Is Homeschooling Effective?
Winning the Debate

Is homeschooling effective? With a homeschool son now at Oxford University I can add to the evidence which proves that teaching your child at home works.

If you look at the advantages of homeschooling, research proves that homeschool can produce better academic results than school.

You'll see homeschool parents sharing their real-life experience of how their children have succeeded in my page on home schooling high school.

And the reason isn't hard to find.

Dr Alan Thomas posed the question: is homeschooling effective? when he looked at the homeschooling debate.

His research into 100 homeschool families in Britain and Australia found:

1. At school, children spent only two thirds of their time on task and the work was often not matched to the ability of the child.
2. At home, children spent most of their time at the frontiers of their learning. (from his book: Educating Children at Home.)

Homeschool Research

If you're homeschooling, you're in the ideal position to answer whatever questions your child asks whenever that may be.

You can tailor homeschool to the interests and ability of your child, without having to think about all the other children in the class sitting round going glassy-eyed.

(Or throwing bubble gum at each other!)

It's common sense that you're going to progress faster if you can concentrate on the areas your child struggles with.

You'll see we find using games the most effective way to teach kids math.

In fact, the freedom homeschool timetables gives you to spend time doing fun math activities must go a long way to answer the debate: why is homeschooling effective?

The importance of tailoring teaching to the individual is no surprise - in fact it's dominated educational debate and training for teachers in many countries for many years.

It took until the 1980s to prove the manifest impossibility of teaching children individually in the classroom (Bennett et al., 1984; Galton, Simon and Croll, 1980).

For example, how can a teacher stop a class each time someone doesn't quite get it?

And if interest is recognized as the key to learning, what about the ghost that haunts too many classrooms - boredom?

Here at home, if the children run away two minutes into my lively explanation of atmospheric pressure, (related to why the bottle in the freezer has a dent in it), I can afford to laugh.

I don't have to follow a timetable with set times and set objectives.

It is this child-centered approach which is the key to answering the question: is homeschooling effective?

You can see more homeschooling research and statistics proving the academic advantages of teaching your child at home here.

The Homeschooling Debate

When it comes to educational philosophy, let's look at what Loris Magaluzzi thinks.

Loris was the inspiration behind the world renowned Reggio approach to learning.  He has this to say:

In other words, just how effective is it to stand up in front of a class and actually teach?

With homeschooling not only are you not obliged to stand up, you're also very often encouraging your child to lead the way.

You'll see lots of kids activities here where William and Catherine are out in front.

Just look at how Catherine has built her own homeschooling robot with recycled crafts from trash and how effective it has been using their interest in our kids dinosaurs project.

Where is the evidence to say that formal, structured, teaching is the most effective way to learn? That is the basis of today's homeschooling debate.

Now there's a thought.

It certainly questions what schools are doing with your child.

Just how effective is school learning?

Lastly, there is clear evidence to demonstrate the part played by individualised teaching and informal, conversational learning in markedly accelerated intellectual development and giftedness. (Bloom (1985), Howe (1990).

When you ask: is homeschooling effective? you'll see that's precisely what homeschool offers.

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