The Academic Advantage of Homeschooling

So what about the advantage of homeschooling when it comes to academic success? We've seen the tremendous advantages of homeschooling that come from your child having the freedom to learn by following their own interests. But is that at the cost of poor results when it comes to exams?

Are you putting your child's future at risk by embarking on some kind of HOME-MADE EXPERIMENT?

Even if you haven't decided to homeschool for academic reasons, society will charge you with being ill-equipped and ill-prepared for a task best left to experts.

Added to the problems with homeschooling we all face, this can be one of the bad things about homeschooling you'll find relatives tend to believe.

Let's start by putting things in perspective by taking a hard look at the competition.

Homeschooling Advantages

Homeschooling statistics carried out by the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) prove the advantages of homeschool. They show that homeschoolers in the US typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public school students on standardized academic achievement tests (NHERI 2010).

You can see more details about the advantages of homeschooling in terms of academic success in our page covering Statistics Homeschooling.

But there are even more reasons to be encouraged about the advantages of home education if you look at evidence from the UK.

Reasons for Homeschooling

Dr. Anthony Seldon, (Master of Wellington College and Biographer of Tony Blair), is just one of a growing number of leading educationalists criticising school learning.

"Schools need to be liberating places," he says, "but it is very hard to do it with the utter throttling, choking straitjacket of the National…Curriculum."

Complaining about soulless schools cursed by League Tables and dominated by "formulaic" exams, he sees the lifeblood being squeezed out of education.

Following William and Catherine's interests was one of my main reasons for homeschooling, and you only have to look at the homeschool activities we've done to see that one of the big advantages of homeschooling has been the delight we're having in making learning fun.

Homeschooling Advantages

We look to schools to set the standard, conveniently forgetting the many failures, the sheer numbers of children leaving school with no formal qualifications whatsoever.

Watching your child having their potential wasted by school is one of the major reasons for homeschooling as you'll see when it comes to homeschool high school.

We all know that the US ranks below average in Science and Maths compared to other developed countries. In fact, you might be entitled to ask:

Just what is it that schools spend all their time doing?

Plus there's the UK's love-affair with testing subjects to death which is one of the reasons your child could well have burnt out long before Higher Education.

The Advantage of Homeschooling

It's not too difficult to prove that school isn't guaranteed to bring your child academic success, but what about homeschool? Research has backed-up the advantage of homeschooling and shown the reasons for it.

If you'd picked up the UK's Observer daily newspaper on August 13th 2000 you'd have see this stark headline:

YOUNGSTERS OF ALL SOCIAL CLASSES DO BETTER IF THEY AVOID SCHOOL, STUDY DISCOVERS…

The paper quotes the first comparative study showing the advantages of homeschool and the reasons for it.

The results prove that: "children at home significantly outperform their contemporaries at school." Paula Rothermel from the University of Durham spent 3 years conducting a survey of 100 homeschool families chosen randomly across the UK.

The survey discovered that homeschool children of working-class parents were at a considerable advantage, achieving considerably higher marks in tests than children of professional, middle-class parents.

"Home educated children do better in conventional terms and in every other way too," said Paula Rothermel.

You couldn't have asked for a clearer endorsement of the advantage of homeschooling if you'd tried!

It also gives you more ammunition to help back up homeschooling facts showing the advantage of homeschool.

We'll look at the reasons for home school being so effective, as well as the many benefits and advantages you and your family get by learning together.

But the advantage of homeschooling in academic terms is indisputable.

I must add though that if you're homeschooling and your child doesn't do well at exams (or doesn't take any) – you haven't 'failed.' We all know how unreliable the system is at measuring intelligence. I'm often struck by the number of famous people with appalling academic records.

You only have to think of Billy Connolly to know who really gets the last laugh.

The advantage of homeschooling is so much more than just passing exams.

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