Home Education Defined

Education is a broader concept than school. Homeschooling has been described as ‘learning without school’. Many of us find that politicians and bureaucracy don’t understand that what makes homeschooling successful is that it isn’t a school at all, it’s quite different. It is difficult, and not necessarily desirable, to replicate school within the home and most of us don’t.

Back when I started home educating my kids in the 1980s people would confuse homeschooling with correspondence school (now referred to as distance education).
In recent years the term unschooling, which describes a particular philosophical approach to the education of children, has been used by the media and is being widely and interchangeably used with the term homeschooling.

I personally prefer using the term home education, and describe us as ‘educating parents’.

The internet and information technology blurs the distinction between distance and online education, and home educating students now access a much wider range of resources, including (in some instances) part-time enrolment in schools and colleges.
However, I’ll take a moment to define the various terms as it can be helpful, especially when we are joining local and online support groups.

Home education is defined as personally taking responsibility for and control of your children's education personally instead of delegating it to a school or teacher.
It is a legal alternative to school based education with home education registration processes available in every state and territory in Australia.

You can select from a huge range of pedagogical approaches and learning materials and resources.

There are two main styles of home education: homeschooling and unschooling. Both make use of a variety of educational resources, including online learning, distance education, tutoring, community classes, group learning and more. Homeschoolers more or less adopt many of the teaching practices and resources found in classrooms and used by teachers.

They follow the general outline of the national curriculum or state syllabus, teaching children in much the same way, and following the scope and sequence within the curriculum, as school teachers do.

They structure their children’s day to accommodate discrete lessons or activities covering specific content within each subject. However, you’ll find that most homeschooled students are much more involved in the selection of content and activities and have a greater say in the direction and approach to education than their schooled peers.

Unschooling goes further than homeschooling: it is a rejection of the traditional reasons for schooling children as well as the methods used to educate them; in particular the segmenting of learning into chunks and teaching it according to a set timetable.

Unschooling trusts in children's innate natural learning ability with parents facilitating supported self-directed learning opportunities. Instead of teaching children in a prescribed manner, unschoolers help them learn what they need to learn in order to grow and develop.

It’s much more than an approach to the education of children, it’s a way of life.

You may hear the terms unschooling and natural or life learning used interchangeably.

Natural learning is simply celebrating the fact that everyone learns all the time, and that by reflecting on the processes by which we learn we can become more focused in meeting our learning needs efficiently, achieving our goals and purposes in our own way and time.

We learn what we need from simply living, usually a busy, constructive and creative life pursuing what interests us or whatever needs are driving us in this moment.
Life learning embraces the concept that a busy, full, productive and creative life based on everyday life at home and in the community naturally provides learning across the curriculum.

Read the next page of this guide: What is Deschooling?