Introduction
Homeschooling,
which was once a distinct educational option, is now widely accepted.
Statistical and demographic information about homeschooling is not widely
available worldwide due to a variety of factors. Globally, there are
differences in the legality of homeschooling. Homeschooling is permitted in
several countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Mexico,
South Africa, the US, and others; however, each nation has its own laws and
regulations. But countries like Germany, Sweden, Turkey, and others have strong
laws against homeschooling. Homeschooling is becoming more prevalent in the US,
where between 2 and 4 million pupils are receiving their education at home
(Kunzman R., Gaither M., and Shepherd G.). Homeschooling is becoming popular in
India also, according to education experts, especially in cities like Bengaluru
and Pune, where the population is said to be financially stable, artistic, and
cosmopolitan. In India, the majority of homeschooling communities are
concentrated in the cities of Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.
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| image: creative commons |
Homeschooling is not a brand-new
concept; it was already practised before the law requiring compulsory
education. Homeschooling is a form of education where the learning environment
is the home. Either parent taught their children at home, or those parents paid
tutors or educators for that purpose. Unschooling and homeschooling are
frequently used interchangeably. According to unschooling parents, who do not
set up a curriculum for their kids, they are not homeschoolers because they
give their kids the freedom to pursue their own interests and learn how they
want to, but homeschooling parents do adhere to a curriculum for their kids,
according to the blog "Freedom to Learn" by Peter Gray, a research
professor of psychology at Boston College. Unschooling is viewed as a form of
homeschooling in official statistics, which do not differentiate between the
two. In India, a parent's educational background, financial independence, and
availability of time are crucial factors in determining how well a child does
in homeschooling. According to the National Household Education Poll (NHES)
2007, a survey based on random sampling, the majority of homeschoolers in the
US live in two-parent households (89%), and slightly more than half (54%) of
those households have just one working parent. Half of homeschooling parents
report having at least a bachelor's degree, indicating a considerably higher
level of education. The main reasons behind homeschooling are concern about the
school environment, the desire to impart moral and religious training, dissatisfaction
with academic instruction, and the child's physical and mental health concerns.
Because of the government's position on homeschooling and
because of high internet speeds and affordable data packages, homeschooling has
become a more viable alternative for Indian parents. According to HSLDA,
between 500 and 1000 children are homeschooled in India, where homeschooling is
legal. Homeschoolers in India can enrol for the NIOS to take the grade 10 and
grade 12 exams, or they can take tests from renowned boards of education as
"Private Candidates Registered with A School" or, in a few states/metros/cities,
through "The British Council." The National Institute of Open
Schooling, the International General Certificate of Secondary Education, and
the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) all offer curricula for parents
who desire to certify their children.
Estimates of Homeschool Students
New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the
United States are the countries where Homeschooling is most common for children
and teenagers. This is a rough estimate meant to give a general overview of Homeschool
students around the world. In the US, where between 2 and 4 million students receive their education at home,
Homeschooling is on the rise (Kunzman R., Gaither M., Homeschooling, and
Shepherd G.).According
to ADCS (Association of Child Services Directors) estimates, there are 81,200
registered homeschooled children in England as of October 2021. According
to HSLDA and SBS News report 21,437 kids in Australia were registered for home
schooling in 2019. According
to Homeschooling
| Education Counts , there were 7,749 pupils being homeschooled in New Zealand
as of July 1, 2021. According
to the HSLDA, 500-1000 children are homeschooled in India; however, no
government organisations regulate homeschooling.
Key Words
Homeschooling, Public Goods, Private Goods, Economic Efficiency, Opportunity Cost.
Main Findings
When physical and mental health
concerns are excluded, then homeschooling becomes a private education and a
private good. Private goods are those that are exclusive and competitive by
nature. As a result, their availability will be reduced for those who cannot
purchase them. As was previously stated, homeschooling requires financial
stability, the luxury of time, and educated parents. The standard of education
that children receive from homeschooling depends on resources, knowledge, and
parental motivation. According to research, taxpayers don't pay anything for
the vast majority of homeschoolers, and families who choose this method of
instruction don't rely on publicly financed educational resources.
Homeschooling fosters prejudice in the educational field. When there is a
significant income gap, the state cannot completely rely on homeschooling.
Homeschooling as a popular alternative may lead to educational inequity, with
the poor children whose parents did not have privilege ultimately suffering as
a result of that discrepancy. One more disadvantage of homeschooling is that parents
can use it as a pretext to send their kids to unregistered institutions that
have fervently religious curricula. In one study (Knox et al., 2014), medical
experts collected instances of serious child abuse that had been reported to
their various medical institutions in Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin, Utah, and
Washington State. They discovered that 47% of the school-age children had been
expelled under the pretext of "homeschooling," and 29% of them had
not been permitted to attend school. Some studies show that homeschoolers
perform well in reading and writing but not in arithmetic. UNESCO recognises
education as a public good. Public education is a public good. In economics,
public goods are considered to be collective consumption goods, and they are
distinguished by their non-rivalry and non-excludability characteristics.
Because social benefits outweigh private benefits and costs, public resources
cannot be distributed effectively under a market-based system. To avoid the
issue of free riders, tax revenue from the government is frequently used to
fund public goods. Being a public good, public education has a positive
externality.Well-educated parents are advantageous to all students. These
parents have time and money to invest in enhancing the institution of learning.
They can attend PTA events and interact with other parents who are not as
well-off in terms of finances and education as they are which will enable the
school to operate more effectively. Homeschooling parents can make financial
contributions and form a strong group to expose ineffective educators. When
parents decide to homeschool their children rather than pull them out of public
schools, these are the benefits that will follow. When middle-class families
abandon public schools in the US, public schools suffer, as they leave public
education and stop supporting the institution by participating in political
oversight (George Shepherd, 2015).
In economics, efficiency refers
to the ability to achieve a goal with little or no waste of resources; however,
because education is a special good, we can judge homeschooling efficiency by
including opportunity cost, which is how many underprivileged children are not
receiving good quality education as a result of homeschooling. Due to the lack
of scientific research on the efficiency of homeschooling at the macro level,
it is not appropriate to state strongly that there is a trade-off between
efficiency and equity in this scenario because, by judging the success of some
homeschoolers, we cannot make them representative of the entire homeschooling
community.
In comparison to public schools,
homeschoolers recognise that there is a higher likelihood of social isolation
when a child is homeschooled because formal education offers more opportunities
for social engagement. Because of this, homeschoolers participate in a variety
of official and unofficial groups. They meet in person and share information in
formal timetable groups. Meeting places for informal sports teams include
houses and playgrounds. Homeschooling mothers collaborate and share knowledge
while also renting out classrooms for different homeschooled children. They
routinely use libraries and the internet for information, occasionally hiring
higher-level tutors and specialists. According to Chatham-Carpenter (1994),
Ensign (1997), and Ray (2009a), homeschooling is likely to change the student's
social circle and promote more interactions between different age groups than
it does with same-age ones. There is a substantial correlation between the
mother's educational level and the child's achievement score among the 36
homeschoolers in Medlin's (1994) study. Mothers are reported to be mostly in
charge of home education across all demographics. Mothers typically shoulder
the majority of the workload associated with homeschooling, both within
individual families and within the larger homeschooling support system,
according to Stevens (2001). According to Lois's (2006, 2009, 2010)
ethnographies of homeschooling reasons and practices, homeschool moms face significant
role pressure, which can lead to emotional burnout.
When parents choose to teach their children at home, it
takes a significant amount of effort and commitment on their part. Those with
resources can benefit from homeschooling. Since most students are no longer
exclusively dependent on their teachers for learning, the Internet and EdTech
companies have significantly changed the educational landscape. Nevertheless,
some kids still lack the tools necessary to study well at home. Because she was
unable to attend online classes due to financial constraints, a 15-year-old
girl in Kerala took her own life. She was a bright student but did not have a
smartphone, and as a result, due to fear and depression, she took her life.
There are numerous homeschooling success stories, and if you look closely at
their backgrounds, you'll see that most of them come from quite wealthy
background and have access to plenty of resources. Finding a solution to the
issue of delivering high-quality education will benefit the most disadvantaged
children and will also inspire homeschoolers. Otherwise, homeschooling will
widen the gap between rich and poor pupils and be harmful to society as a
whole. Making education more exclusive may benefit some kids, but it would
surely harm others. Apple (2000a), Lubienski (2000).
The Way Forward
I discovered while conducting my research that a number of
publications emphasised the demand for a more rigorous examination of the
recent discoveries. After a more thorough investigation of the economic
implications of homeschooling, it will become clear whether or not it is
advantageous from a macroeconomic point of view. Our knowledge about
homeschooling is mostly based on anecdotal information (Houston, 1999).
Everyone appears to agree that the homeschooling movement is likely to have a
significant impact beyond what happens in certain households and with
particular children (Apple, 2000a; Bates, 1991; Riegel, 2001).
