Homeschooling is On the Rise in Australia: Who is Doing it and Why?

by Rebecca English, The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/homeschooling-is-on-the-rise-in-australia-who-is-doing-it-and-why-110268

Homeschooling is legal in Australia and thousands of families are doing it. from shutterstock.com

This is the first article in our four-part series on homeschooling in Australia. The series will answer common questions including whether homeschooled children have enough opportunities for socialisation, and how their outcomes compare with children who attend formal schooling.

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Home education is a legally recognised alternative to enrolling a child in school in all Australian states and territories. Children need to be enrolled in either a school or home education from around the age of 6 until completion age (around 17 years-old). If the parent chooses home education, they must apply to the state or territory authority for permission.

In most states and territories, the parent or a hired registered teacher is responsible for the education of the child, usually at the child’s home. Any parent, regardless of their educational background, is legally able to apply for, and homeschool their child.

Parents must submit a plan for their home education, which, in most cases, should show an alignment between their child’s learning and the national curriculum. Parents can buy a program, but in most cases, they develop their own, in line with their philosophies of education.

How many Australian children are being homeschooled?

Across Australia, there are around 20,000 homeschooled students and the numbers are growing. Around 1,100 students were being homeschooled in Queensland in 2013. By 2018, this had increased to 3,232 students.

This means there are around the same number of homeschooled students in Queensland as the population of Brisbane State High School.

The numbers are rising in other states too. In New South Wales an estimated 4,700 students were enrolled in homeschool in 2017 compared to around 3,300 in 2013.

Around 5,300 children were being homeschooled in Victoria in 2018, compared to 3,545 children in 2013.

These numbers may not tell the whole story as they only represent families who have registered to homeschool their child. Research suggests there may be thousands who haven’t registered, and so are homeschooling their children “illegally”.

Why do families choose to homeschool?

There are many reasons parents choose to educate their children at home. For some families it will be because of religious beliefs. Geography or financial reasons might stop these families from accessing a suitable private school.

Some families choose to homeschool for cultural reasons. from shutterstock.com

Other families might be ideologically opposed to mainstream schooling and see it as an unnecessary or inappropriate intrusion into family life.

Some of the biggest growth in home education is in the “accidental” home education group. These are families for whom school was a first choice, but it did not work. There are many reasons school may not have worked, but often it’s down to special educational need. These families would traditionally have moved their children around between schools but are now homeschooling instead.

Studies suggest families who take their children out of school, when they have a special need, and homeschool are more satisfied with their child’s education than when they were in traditional school.

The rise in homeschooling also appears to have links to worldwide changes in education. Many parents see schools as failing their children including for cultural reasons, and believe homeschooling is a suitable alternative. Some families feel schools are not meeting their primary objectives of education and (healthy) socialisation for their children.

What about assessments?

After a period of time (in Queensland, for instance, it’s ten months) parents report to their state or territory’s education department on their homeschooled child’s progress. The reporting requirements differ across states and territories. 

For some states, such as NSW and WA, the report is delivered to a person who visits the family. For others, such as Queensland, the parent writes the report and sends it to the department.

Unlike traditional schools, parents don’t usually “assess” their child’s learning through exams or assignments. The reports must show progress in key areas. Some homeschooled students might choose to participate in NAPLAN testing while others won’t do any testing at all.

Homeschooled students can choose to go for an ATAR and do a school-based apprenticeship or traineeship, even though they don’t do assessment.

Is it the same as distance education?

Some parents may like the idea of home education but feel they want a more school-like experience. They may choose to enrol their children in distance education.

While it’s also conducted at home, distance education is not home education and the enrolment counts as a “school”. Because it’s technically a school, distance education students are not counted among home education numbers.

The differences are many. Home education is conducted by the parent, but distance education is a school program delivered by teachers at home frequently using the internet. It is also usually delivered to a group of children, rather than a family.

There are private and public distance education schools. Some states, such as New South Wales, limit the enrolment to students who are geographically isolated or may be experiencing a special need that stops them from going to school. In others, such as Queensland, any child can enrol in a distance education school.

What about outcomes?

The volume and quality of the research on outcomes for children in home schooling is limited. In Australia, studies have focused on NAPLAN results. These suggest home-educated students score higher than state averages across every measure. The effect continues even if the child returns to school.

These children may be doing well because they receive one-on-one attention. Or it could be because the child’s learning is personalised and the child has agency over their learning.

Studies from the US, where there is far more data, suggest home-educated students enjoy benefits in reading, language, maths, science and social studies. And many families there cite dissatisfaction with schools’ achievements as a reason to home educate. There is no difference between home education in the USA and Australia.

The rise in numbers poses issues for education departments and government authorities charged with managing the practise. They may not be set up to deal with large, and increasing, numbers of registrations. For most departments of education, the numbers of families choosing home education has traditionally been low.

In addition, authorities may be unable to police those families who choose not to register.

The increasing choice of home education is an issue that should be on the radar of every state and territory education authority.

Rebecca English, Lecturer in Education, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The PhD - Writing Conference Presentations: Think About the Audience

by Cally Guerin, Doctoral Writing: https://doctoralwriting.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/writing-conference-presentations-think-about-the-audience/

I’ve been fortunate to attend several Higher Education conferences lately and have been thinking about the research writing in the papers I’ve listened to. There have been a broad range of presentation styles, giving me contact with norms outside my usual disciplinary connections. Most of the presentations have been fabulously stimulating, and it has been wonderful to spend time with people who are passionate about their research, socially engaged and working to make the world a better place. I have also been reminded of just how important it is to think about communicating with the live audience in the room.

It has been particularly interesting to listen to some more reflective, less data-driven papers than has been common at most of the conferences I attend. In doctoral education, it is common to follow the science IMRAD model of presenting an introductory background explaining the context and motivation for the study; an outline of the methods; results and analysis; and finally, a discussion about the implications for the findings. I like the opportunity to hear scholars stepping back and theorising about the big picture meanings of their broad research concerns.

BUT – and it’s a big but – it’s necessary to retain a focus on the audience who has given up their own time to come along to the presentation.

It has been somewhat perplexing to me that experienced researchers and educators sometimes still seem to make exactly the same mistakes as rookie presenters. What’s going on? I know that everyone has been in situations where they’ve run out of preparation time – it seemed like such a good idea to submit an abstract to the conference months ago, but suddenly it’s due tomorrow [see our related post on running out of time for preparing conference papers]. I’ve certainly delivered conference presentations that have fallen far short of my initial intentions. Nevertheless, this is a plea for presenters to consider the needs of their audiences.

Talking about slides

What lies behind a presenter’s decision against using PowerPoint, even when that is the norm for the particular group? Are they consciously choosing to make a particular point, did they run out of preparation time, or is there some other motivation? I know that it is fashionable in some quarters to deride the use of PowerPoint, but slides have become ubiquitous for good reason. I like the visuals in conference presentations; even simple slides help me keep track of the argument and how the different parts of the story fit together. Visual clues are also useful for both speakers and listeners from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD); it can take a while for members of an international audience to tune into new accents.

Prezi can be a good alternative for those who want something different from what might be regarded as the cliché of PowerPoint. I think it is particularly useful if the presentation is less linear in its approach, focused instead on the relationships between a number of concepts or needing to drill down into the stories behind topics (almost like a footnote lying behind the text). But there are some who find the on-screen zooming in and out quite dizzying and distracting, so it needs to be managed carefully.

I also sometimes see slides of solid text with barely a scrap of white space – why? It doesn’t cost any more to have a slide with the main topics or headings, and then a fresh slide to focus on each topic with the necessary text as the presenter works through the nuances of each subheading. There’s no advantage in cramming the maximum words onto a single slide.

On a related topic, why put up a long quotation on the slide, tell the audience they can read it, but then not allow reading time? The effect is either 1. No one reads the text, and therefore it’s not worth bothering to include it, or 2. People read the text and therefore stop listening to the speaker – and they get annoyed if it is whipped away from them before they have finished. Either way, the communication is broken and the speaker confuses the audience.

Sitting vs standing

Another choice at conferences can be whether to sit or stand while speaking. In some rooms there is no option but to stand, which can be awkward if there is nowhere to put your papers. However, sitting at a table in a flat room with rows of desks can mean that the speaker disappears to all but the front couple of rows of the audience. In a small, informal group it can work well to sit, especially if the presentation is actually designed to encourage conversation between those present. On the whole, I believe that standing for formal presentations allows for a far more engaging audience experience – the audience can see who is speaking and the speaker can make eye contact with the audience.

Full text vs dot points

And finally, the conventions around reading from the text or talking to dot points is one that is partly dependent on discipline and partly on the speaker’s confidence and experience. Engaging presenters display an awareness of the differences between writing an academic essay and writing a spoken version of the same content. Presenters need to consider lexical density when reading from a prepared speech, not least if it leads the audience to think that they could have just as easily stayed home and read the ‘paper’ for themselves. I completely understand that nervous presenters can find it hard to remember the details if they are not written out in full, and for some disciplines the precise wording of the argument is crucial to making the key points. But a less academic/writerly, more informal style can be scripted in full so that the listeners have time to absorb the content. Make it sound like the presenter is actually in the room with the audience, speaking directly to the real people sitting there, focused on communicating.

This is a plea to all researcher developers working with doctoral writers – please encourage new researchers to remember their audience when presenting. Tell them to discuss the conference norms and expectations with supervisors and others who have attended that conference. Make spaces so they can have a practice run with a critical friend. Remind them that the activity is all about  communicating research to peers. These seem like obvious points, but it is surprisingly common for presenters to skip these crucial preparations.

What’s your experience of conference presentations that work or don’t work? I’m particularly interested to know how different the expectations might be in different disciplines.