Mother and teacher –
The growing issue of home education
Ingrid Nilsson, Department of Education
Umea University, Sweden
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Paper presented at the 32nd Congress of the Nordic Educational Research Association,
Reykjavik, Iceland, March 11-13, 2004
Abstract
Home education is growing in importance in many countries. One reason for this is a deeper extension of market relations in education, relations which include an individualised concept of education. A related reason is a more wide spread access to the Internet, which provides home pages with information and materials for teaching parents.
In north America – both Canada and the US – home education is an important part of the education sector, and the importance is increasing. Also the UK has a substantial amount of children educated at home. In the Nordic countries, home education is however still marginal. In Sweden it is almost non-existing as it is prohibited. The legislation states mandatory attendance to an approved school.
Some data about home education in different countries are presented and some elements for further analyse are put forward. In the paper it is argued that home education will become an important issue in the near future.
Content
- What is home education?
- Frequency
- The legislation
- Why home education?
- Why study home education?
References
Appendices
What is home education?
I prefer the concept home education, even if “home schooling” has been widely used, particularly in North America. “Home schooling” gives the wrong associations - to schoolhouse or school-class. In home education none of those exists.
Home education means that children are taught at home by one of the parents, for a shorter or longer time. In this brief paper, I will avoid the definition problems (see e g Petrie 2001, for a discussion of some European countries). Home education is a growing issue in many countries, e g North America (USA and Canada). In general, the mother is the teacher. Nowadays[P1], the home teaching parent has access to a lot of different home pages, where she can find advice from experienced home teachers, where she orders educational material, where she can find debate articles and she can join a group of fellow teachers. Many organisations with different profiles are supporting home education, most of all churches. In North America, also indigenous groups offer support for their forms of home education.
Home education is private, as it takes place in the home. It is more private than private schooling, and all this indicate that it is difficult to get relevant and correct information about it. Another reason for difficulties in this respect is the controversial aspects of the issue - many individuals fear or applaud the possible outcomes of homeeducation. Independent, critical research is almost non-existing.
Frequency
Because home education is genuinely private it is difficult to measure. My focus is primarily on the countries USA, Canada, UK, Norway and Sweden.
In USA more than 1 million children are taught at home. According to Apple (2001 p 172, referring National Home Education Research Institute) “a considerable amount of students are taught at home”. According to National Home Education Research Institute’s home page something between 1,7 and 2,1 million students are home educated 2002-2003 (
In the UK around 100.000 pupils are taught at home, I have contacted official and in-official agencies – including the DfES - to get information about the frequency of home education. The Department for Education and Skills confirms the figure…”currently there are approximately 100.000 pupils being educated at home; about whom this Department holds no specific data. To date, no research has been carried out by this Department into the subject of Home Educated children.” (Personal communication: 2004-03-17;
Different sources from the UK indicate that around 1 % of the pupils in the age of compulsory education, get it at home. In the US this percentage is higher, how much is difficult to measure.
According to a research report published at the University of Oslo, 385 pupils are educated at home in Norway, the school year 2001/2002. As this figure is an estimate, it is not secure. (
The legislation
The legislation differs between countries. In Sweden, home teaching is forbidden, as every child must attend school (skolplikt). Only very few children, with very particular reasons, as disease in family or severe conflict between local school board and family, are taught at home by parents. In Aamodt (2001) the Norwegian and international legislation is described and analysed. The UN Declaration of the Human Rights states the parents’ rights to choose education for the child. Some statements, e g by the European Human Rights Commission, prohibit the state to intervene, if parents want to arrange education outside the public school (Aamodt 2001, p 46). This includes not just private schools but also home education. Following Aamodt, most western countries – also Sweden – have accepted an international legislation where parents have the right to decide upon the education of their children. In most countries, the parents are obliged to secure an education for the children (undervisningsplikt; opplaeringsplikt), and this education shall have an accepted quality. The quality is e g controlled in USA and Canada by inspections and examinations. The future will show if the Swedish national state will defend the legislation of skolplikt, or if parents’ choice will be extended from schools (private or public) to home education. If so, some Swedish parents are prepared to start.
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Why home education?
The immediate answer is that the new technology makes it possible. More and more people are connected to net-works, parents have access to computers and mobile technologies. ‘Schooling’ can be more or less fixed to a building, or to a teacher (Selwyn 2003).
Another but related answer is the new individualism. Learning has become a matter for the individual or the family (Ball 2000; Nilsson 2002). This is at the expense of the legitimacy of the nation-state and its traditional policy-making (Bonal, 2003). The nation-state is retiring, leaving space for new agencies.
One “new agency” in school policy is the parent. There has been a huge change in parents’ role in education. The powerful parent is a cornerstone in the new liberal school policy. The pupil’s education is a family project, not a public concern. What was public turns into private, and “private” has no ultimate borderline. A bit more private is possible.
According to Apple (2001 p 173) many parents in the US engage in home education for religious reasons, even if that is not the only case. In a broader perspective, schools no longer offer, what groups of parents are looking for. Those parents want to preserve and strengthen the family, they often feel threatened by public violence and they may doubt the existing schools capacity to give the academic supportive setting they believe necessary for their children.
Belfield (2004) agrees that “high-quality data is sparse…” but states: “Undoubtedly, one result would be a rise in the amount of religious education children receive.” (p 18).
Evidently, many families can afford home education. Also according to Apple (2001 note 45 p 265) some charter schools have found legal room for transferring money from schools to homes.
Why study home education?
As a feature in reality, home education becomes more and more frequent and thus a necessary topic for research. The effects on society of an extensive home education are not known. One obvious effect for the single child is a limited experience of other families, other ethnic and class backgrounds, and maybe most important: a lack of habit to manage conflicts and negotiations between individuals and groups, and a limited experience of citizenship.
Inclusive education has been a concern for educationalists for many years. New measures are taken to include children, previously excluded from mainstream schooling. Home educating parents are allowed to exclude their own children, deciding that heterogeneity and diversity shall no longer form the educational setting for their children. Is there a need for protecting children from their parents’ decisions about education? Mittler (2000 p 111) writes:
“Inclusion is about everyone having opportunities for choice and self-determination. In education it means listening to and valuing what children have to say regardless of age or labels.”
According to Armstrong (2004) around one percent of the English pupils are excluded from mainstream schooling and sent to special schools. If we rely on the figures presented by some British home pages for home education, the numbers of pupils taught at home are very much the same. On one hand, strong efforts are made for the inclusion of new groups of pupils, on the other hand exclusion is hasty accepted, because it is evoked by the parents.
Another comment is not marginal: home education constructs a gender trap, where mother “teachers” tend to get caught. For longer or shorter time, they are excluded from working life and depending on the husband’s salary, at the same time as they are taking over the responsibility for the child’s progress and wealth in all respects.
Finally, it seems obvious, that a new phenomenon is emerging in education. Researchers must be concerned, and discern home education on the map of the field.
References
Aamodt, Öisten (2001). Retten til hjemmeundervisning. Instituutt for offentlig retts skriftserie nr
9/2001, Universitetet I Oslo. /The right to home education/
Armstrong, Derrek (2004). Policies and Practices in Special Needs Education: Discourses of
Inclusion and Exclusion. (Unpublished paper.)
Ball, Stephen (2000). Market mixes, Ethical Re-tooling and consumer Heroes: Education
Markets in England. (Manuscript.)
Belfield, Clive R (2004). Home-Schooling in the US. Occasional Paper 88, NationalCenter for
the Privatization in Education, Teachers College, ColumbiaUniversity.
Bonal, Xavier (2003). The neo-liberal Educational Agenda and the Legitimation Crises: old and
new state strategies. British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol 24,2, pp159-176.
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Mittler, Peter (2000). Working Towards Inclusive Education: Social Contexts. London: David
Fulton.
Nilsson, Ingrid (2002). Fristående skolor – internationell forskning 1985-2000. Stockholm:
Skolverket. /Independent schools – international research 1985-2000./
Petrie, Amanda (2001). Home Education in Europe and the Implementation of Changes to the
Law. International Review of Education, 47, 5, 477-500.
Selwyn, Neil (2003). Schooling the Mobile Generation: the future for schools in the mobile-
networked society. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24, 2, pp 131-145.
Personal communication (mail)
2004-03-17
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