1. File an annual private school affidavit. 2. Maintain an attendance register. 3. Instruction must be in English. 4. Instructors must be capable of teaching. 5. Provide instruction in the courses commonly taught in the public schools (e.g., language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and driver training). 6. Maintain immunization records or personal beliefs exemption. 7. Maintain a list of courses of study. 8. Maintain a list of instructors with their addresses and qualifications.
This is MINIMALLY enforced. If the parent has a teaching credential, the rules are even more lax "The child must be taught for at least three hours a day, between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., for 175 days each school year in the several branches of study required to be taught by the public schools and in the English language."[1]
On a related side notes, private schools also do not have to follow the curriculum set for public schools. There are even some public schools that are exempted from parts of the mandatory curriculum (charters).
I've looked in to this for my two year old son in the UK because I'm unhappy with a number of the principles and policies of the education system here. Not least of which the religious leaning that many local schools have. I'm not happy for my son to be taught there's a "God" from such a young age. Anyway...
Over 50,000 children are home schooled in the UK and apparently this figure is on the up each year. The laws vary slightly between England/Wales and Scotland so I'll focus on England as that's where I'm based.
If you want to home school your kid you need to adhere to one simple rule. You must give your child a "suitable education". There's actually case law and precedents set here, and the case law cites that home schooling should be sufficient to: "prepare the children for life in modern civilised society, and to enable them to achieve their full potential."
This is clearly a broad statement, and intentionally so. This means that home schooling parents do not need to adhere to the curriculum taught in schools, nor do their children need to sit the exams that their school taught counterparts will undertake.
Parents do not have to prove that they have the necessary skills to provide this education. Local authorities can request informal visits to home schooled children (but that's unlikely given how under resourced they are). A local authority could take steps to force a kid back in to school but they would have to be very unsatisfied with the level of home schooling.
Time isn't tracked. It's not about the amount of time you spend teaching your kid, it's about providing a suitable education - whatever that means. The kid doesn't have to take a school test...ever!
Given the research I've undertaken to date if I do decide to home school I would almost certainly join forces with a local group of home schoolers who tend to meet up once a week and compare notes whilst taking their spawn on day trips. I think it's healthy for kids to have a network of peers regardless of whether they're in school, and it's somewhat healthy to compare your child's progress with that of others.
I would educate my kid in a way that he would be capable of taking and passing the exams all school taught kids take in secondary school when they're 15/16. Reason being that if he decides to go to college and/or university he'll have the same qualifications as everybody else.
I think more than the decision to home school or not is the obligation parents have to ensure that they don't simply throw their children in to education without performing appropriate due diligence. Too many parents I know see schools as free childcare and justify their decision to pick a state school on the basis that "it's the law". Parents have a number of choices in how to educate their kids and blindly selecting the wrong path can lead to disastrous results.
It's very liberal, practically libertarian. And I think sadly the reason it's been allowed to continue like this where other countries have cracked down is that the UK does not have much of a tradition of taking your kid out of school for crackpot religious or political reasons. Maybe it will start to become a problem (qv the Scottish "named persons" scheme kerfuffle).
I see CofE religious education as harmlessly ineffective, possibly even an effective vaccine against getting religion in later life.
Awesome. Please, oh please call your kids as minions or henchmen/women" when next talking with them. :D
Homeschooled children don't have to be socially isolated. Some areas have many groups of various sorts and some children opt to take electives at schools (gym, music, art) or get involved in various after school activities. A lot depends on the area you live in.
He genuinely seems to like the social aspects of school.
Anyway, homeschooling isn't an option for us. I have a demanding tech job and my wife works and is otherwise unsuited for managing homeschooling.
