Massive Surge in Interest in Home Education

Tamara Kidd, Tutor Your Own Child, Dec 2021

Currently, there is a flood of parents who are pulling their children out of school and are looking for teachers to provide an education for them. Lucky for them there are also an equal number of teachers who are pulling out of the system. What does that mean for them? We'll see, but what does it mean to the home educators who have been educating their own children? Is this influx affecting you positively or negatively?

There have been a fair few people around sharing with me some negative feedback and fear that this will change homeschooling. I think it will but not in the negative ways people assume. It won't mean we won't be educating our own children if that's what we have opted to do. It will mean we have more choices for resources.

It will also mean there is a new breed of homeschooler, or at home schooler, who fits in the middle between home educator and school user, but we have always had that group existing. They are the Distance Education crew and the research shows that after 2 years many of those will opt to home educate and opt out of school in their house for the many reasons home educators would be aware of.

So 2022 is shaping up to be a year of expansion.

• More teachers = more resources being available. Some are paid but a lot are not and most people do realise that they need to offer freebies to show people what they are selling so come 2022 there will be more free stuff available.
  
• Some teachers won't stay but will likely leave free stuff behind.
  
• Some teachers are providing insight into the system as it stands saving people a lot of work into researching whether to use a school or not at the moment.
  
• Many professionals are coming with an open mind to home educators so even if they return to the system they will be better informed when dealing with families who don't fit into the system and may be better at supporting those families to look into home education.
  
• Many professionals are providing more services to families where OT, Psychology etc are needed and they are already open to home education so will be less resistant.