When Gemma Troughton’s daughter started prep in Brisbane, her anxiety “blew through the roof”.
It was 2020 – a year of lockdowns, remote learning and uncertainty. But as the schooling system stabilised, her daughter didn’t.
“She pushed through prep and year 1, crying morning and night about going,” Troughton says.
“At school she would mask it, then she’d get in the car and burst into tears. She was always a bit anxious but amid the pandemic it blew through the roof.
“We were at the point we were feeling fractured as a family.”
Now nine, Troughton’s daughter is one of a growing number of “accidental home schoolers” – those who opted for home schooling after finding the mainstream system didn’t work for them.
In total, 40,000 Australian children are home schooled – double the rate before the pandemic in 2019, and a record high for every state and territory.
‘A square peg’
Troughton took her daughter out of school in term 2 last year.
As a teacher, she put her faith in the mainstream system. But after seeking external help and receiving a diagnosis for her daughter of autism and anxiety, she felt it wasn’t suited to neurodiverse children.
“We haven’t looked back, it’s been the best thing for us,” she says.
“[Mainstream education] is a square peg. You want to fit everybody in it but it just doesn’t work. We had to make a dramatic change for the health of our daughter.”
Home schooling differs from distance learning as was experienced by students during lockdown. Instead of teachers delivering a remote curriculum, students are taught at home by a parent or tutor.
Queensland has had the largest increase in home-schooling rates. There were 10,048 students enrolled in home schooling in 2023, an increase of 19% in a single year. In 2019, 3,411 students were enrolled – 195% below the current number.
New South Wales had 12,359 enrolled in home schooling as of the end of 2022, a 109% increase from 2019 and the highest number in the nation.
Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria also experienced sweeping increases in excess of 70%.
There were 6,466 students in WA studying from home in 2023, compared with 3,720 before the pandemic.
In Victoria there were 10,481 children registered for home schooling as of July this year. It’s a 72% jump from 2019, but a slight decrease compared with a record peak at the end of 2022, when 11,332 children were enrolled.
South Australia had a 79% increase, with 2,443 enrolments according to the latest data. Tasmania had 1,441 students registered for home schooling, a 35% increase on 2019, while the Australian Capital Territory’s rates rose by 52% and the Northern Territory 52% in the same time period.
‘A last resort’
A senior lecturer in education at Queensland University of Technology, Dr Rebecca English, says numbers are even higher in secondary years, suggesting kids are being pulled out of the system for a reason – frequently, as a “last resort”.
“Parents would rather send kids to school – there might be a second or third choice and then they feel out of options,” she says. “A big one is not experiencing their kids being happy at school.
“It’s intimately connected to issues around school refusal. Kids might be neurodiverse, not learning very well, not finding school is meeting their needs or may be bullied. None are mutually exclusive – it’s usually a confluence.”
Throw in a pandemic that forced parents to work from home, and English says parents have also realised they can be around more with flexible schedules.
“Parents had different experiences of school during Covid – it changed their relationship with [their children],” English says. “Schools and teachers have been panned and parents are unhappy.”
She says ongoing teacher shortages also can’t be discounted, a phenomenon hitting schools globally. The UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand have also experienced rising rates of home schooling in recent years.
Pathways to university
There’s limited research into the effects of home schooling on children who were experiencing difficulties in traditional settings.
But as rates continue to grow, providers and services have arisen to assist parents with teaching, tutoring and curriculums.
“It’s become a big business,” English says. “There’s a market for it and more options now than there used to be.”
Ellen Brown is the head of Euka Future Learning, the largest online provider of home-school education in Australia.
After launching curriculums for year 11 and 12 students in 2021, it has partnered with nine universities in each state and territory to offer pathways for home-schooled students to attend tertiary institutions.
Home-schooled students don’t attain Atars, and before the program could only attend university via Tafe bridging courses.
The pathway allows students to enrol with an academic transcript based on assessments and teacher feedback.
Brown says enrolments have increased threefold since offering the senior program, hundreds of whom have gone on to university.
“Historically, most home schoolers would go on to work in trades or their family business,” she says.
“It used to feel like a disadvantage. Times have changed though, and students are keen to learn at home and do a degree.”
Brown says there has been a shift in the types of students choosing to be educated at home – some experience learning challenges or struggle with their mental health and others were upended by Covid.
“We’re enrolling a small primary school – hundreds – per term, and early indications are we’ll more than triple our year 11 and 12 cohort again for next year,” she says.
“There’s been a huge influx through Covid that just didn’t go back.”
For Troughton, home schooling allows autonomy for her daughter to learn at her own pace about topics that interest her – from bees to space and the ocean.
“The failure wasn’t that of the teachers or school, it’s system-wide,” she says. “Demands on teachers are growing and growing, and burnout is real.
“We need to reconsider how the mainstream system works. Is it a choice when there’s no other choice?”
• This article was amended on 26 November 2023. The number of students enrolled in home schooling in NSW as of the end of 2022 is 12,359, not 12,539 as stated in an earlier version.
