Is Homeschooling Effective?
Winning the Debate

Is homeschooling effective or does school really have all the answers? As you can see if you look at the advantage of homeschooling, research proves that homeschool can produce better academic results than 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, researching 100 homeschool families in Britain and Australia. When at school, he found out that children spent only two thirds of their time on task and the work was not often matched to the ability of the child.

At home, on the other hand, children spent most of their time at the frontiers of their learning. (Dr Alan Thomas, Educating Children at Home.)

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 homeschool math. In fact, having the freedom homeschool scheduling 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?

Yet feelings of failure are an obvious cause of putting children off learning, sometimes for life.

And if interest is recognised 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?

The Homeschooling Debate

When it comes to educational philosophy, let's look at what Loris Magaluzzi's thinks. He runs one the world's top 10 centres for educational excellence and has this to say:

"What children learn does not follow as an automatic result from what is taught...Rather it is in large part due to the child's own doing as a consequence of their activities."

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 homeschool activities here where William and Catherine are out in front; just look at how Catherine has built her own homeschooling robot with recycled crafts or how effective it has been using their interest in dinosaurs for our homeschool lesson plans.

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.

Dr Alan Thomas' research would suggest that children can progress at the same rate as children at school (at least until High School) simply from what they absorb in everyday living.

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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