Anyone with any experience in teaching will know that there isn't ever a one-size-fits-all solution for every student.
After all, every student is different. Since even the best teachers may struggle to teach every student as effectively as possible, some parents are looking for other educational options like private schools or homeschooling.
Legal Requirements Of Homeschooling In Ireland
Every person in Ireland has a constitutional right to homeschool their child. After all, the Irish Constitution states that parents and the family are a child's primary educators and even outlines their duties and responsibilities as parents.
Whether you want to call it homeschooling (sometimes spelt home schooling) or home education, parents in Ireland do not require a formal teaching education.
Parents in Ireland do not need to follow the national curriculum to homeschool their children. However, there are minimum requirements for the education that the child receives.
In addition to providing this "minimum education", parents must register with TUSLA's Alternative Education Assessment and Registration Service (AEARS).
The Department of Education and Science has a guide on what the "minimum education" should be. This guide, "Guidelines on the Assessment of Education in Places Other Than Recognised Schools," is a must-read for parents in Ireland considering homeschooling their children.
This is mostly to ensure that your child gets an education that's appropriate to them and that your homeschooling benefits your child's development rather than hinders it. This also includes requirements like contributing to your child's moral development, providing opportunities to develop their intellectual capacities, and offering a balanced range of learning experiences.
As for registering, an assessor will check the details of the education you plan to offer your child, the materials you'll use, and how long you plan to teach your child. If this goes well, your child will be registered.
Suppose the preliminary assessment could have gone better or more information was needed. In that case, a more in-depth, comprehensive assessment would be conducted.
Homeschooling in Ireland offers unique benefits. However, if your child wants to attend university or any third-level education, there are some downsides. If they haven't completed their Leaving Certificate, university entry is far more complicated or impossible. Homeschooled children can still take state exams, though.
Benefits of Home Education
Now that you know what to do to educate your child from home, let's examine the benefits of homeschooling.
After all, you want what's best for your child, and you may believe homeschooling will provide them with the right education.
Homeschooling allows parents to visit the library more frequently, visit museums, visit parks and outdoor spaces, and even exercise in local parks.
One key advantage of homeschooling is its flexibility. Despite the name, homeschooling doesn't have to take place at home. Parents can 'homeschool' their children in any location that they find suitable according to their lesson plan or curriculum.
Suppose there's an opportunity for parents to travel with their children somewhere interesting while still providing the minimum education required. In that case, they can offer more engaging lessons and trips worldwide.
Homeschooling is often a popular choice for parents worldwide who regularly travel for work or other reasons and cannot keep their children in school.
Homeschooling allows parents to ensure that every session is tailored to their child and their interests. This doesn't mean they can ignore any subject their child doesn't like. Still, they can integrate their hobbies and interests into the lessons, making them more effective.
Top Benefits of Homeschooling
- Personalise the curriculum: Parents who homeschool their children can teach a different curriculum, prioritising aspects of education that they feel are relevant to their child.
- Integrate learning into everything: With homeschooling, you can make every activity a learning opportunity for your child. Whether in a lesson at home, outdoors on a trip, or even running errands, you can teach your child wherever you are.
- Teach relevant skills: Parents can teach their children valuable skills for everyday life, which are often ignored in more academic-focused state education. Rather than teaching them to pass an exam, you can teach them how to do things.
- Personalise learning to your child: This is one of the most significant advantages of homeschooling. Parents can ensure that every lesson is tailored to their child, what they want to do, what they want to learn, and what they like. This personalised approach can ensure your child's needs are being met.
- Avoid illness: For any child with health issues, falling ill can be worrying or even potentially dangerous. Homeschooled children won't run the risk of catching certain illnesses because they will have less interaction with children indoors in traditional schools.
- Inspire confidence and independence in their learning: Homeschooling allows you to focus on your child's education and turn them into confident and independent learners, which isn't always effectively done in traditional schools.
- Take learning outside: For outdoorsy children, sitting in a classroom all day can be a stifling experience that ultimately hinders their intellectual development. Children who like to be outside can have lessons wherever their parents are willing to take them.
- Avoid bullying and peer pressure: Certain schools may have problems with bullying or peer pressure, and homeschooling can mitigate this risk by taking children out of these problematic environments. This isn't to say that homeschooled children shouldn't interact with their peers, but as a parent, you'll have much more control over who's in their peer group. This can provide a sense of relief and security for parents.
Creating a Homeschooling Course or Curriculum
While parents of homeschooled children have to offer a minimum education, it's clear that most want to provide their children with a better education than they'd get in school and don't want to teach them the minimum.
Creating a homeschooling course or curriculum is a crucial step for parents. While this is not obligated to be the same as the curriculum they'd be taught in traditional schools, it might be worth looking at different curriculums to see what your child would be taught if they weren't homeschooled.
This can help you structure their lessons or give you ideas for everything they should be learning in each subject or even which subjects they should be taught.
The Pros and Cons of Homeschooling Curriculums
A curriculum can help you structure what you teach your child during homeschooling, but it's not always an advantage.
Think about your child's learning outcomes for the school year and everything they'll need to learn, and then allocate the outcomes across a specific period. Set monthly learning goals and break lessons and skills into more manageable chunks.
A curriculum has the advantage of providing a framework from which you can work. It also can help you hold yourself and your child accountable for their learning objectives and monitor whether or not they're being achieved.
Since it's just you and your child, you can adapt a homeschooling curriculum more regularly and easily if it's not working.
The downside of creating your own curriculum is that you have to invest time and effort into it.
You can always buy curriculum kits or materials. Still, these are costly and are unlikely to be tailored to your child.
Online tutoring differs from homeschooling, but they can still offer a way to deliver or even create a curriculum. Specialists in given subjects will better understand what to teach your child in a particular topic. However, this requires planning, interviewing, and hiring a tutor for each subject, which can quickly become quite expensive.
Online courses offer a cheaper option to homeschoolers and give the structure of a class in almost any subject or skill you can think of. If there's a particular skill or subject you're unable to teach them, you could enrol them in an online course.
| PROS | CONS | |
|---|---|---|
| Make your own | Personalised to your child's interests, strengths and skills; very flexible | Needs planning and time |
| Curriculum kits | You can buy a program for an entire year | Often expensive; not personal to your child |
| Tutors – Live or online | Allows your child to interact with different people with different expertise | May take time to find the right tutor willing to commit to a school term/year; multiple tutors may get hard to manage and expensive |
| Online Courses | Give you access to learn anything you can think of | You need access to equipment such as an internet compatible device, and an Internet connection |
Top Tips for Successful Homeschooling
Three main ways exist to get the most out of homeschooling your child.
1. Tailor Everything to Them
Remember that the main reason to homeschool is that your child can be taught in the most effective ways possible.
Much like hiring a private tutor, the main benefit is that every lesson and activity can be planned with them in mind.
Don't miss your chance to offer them the best possible education by using standard resources they could have simply used in a traditional school; make it about them!
2. Flexible Organisation
Homeschooling requires organisation, but you must also know that following the plan is not worthwhile. Take advantage of opportunities to improve lessons or create learning opportunities simply because you've planned something else.
Your schedule can change if something better comes up, as you can always revisit a particular lesson or session later.
3. Help is Out There
Remember that you're not on your own. You're not the first parent to homeschool their children; you can learn from others and their mistakes.
Parents homeschooling their children can also work together. You could homeschool your children and some other homeschoolers in your area of expertise and have different parents homeschool your child in their particular subject!
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