As coronavirus restrictions are being gradually lifted across Australia's states and territories, students are once again returning to school to resume face-to-face learning.
During this period many of them have been receiving homeschooling, an experience no-doubt challenging to parents and guardians.
Yet for some students, longterm homeschooling has not only led to outstanding academic results but also bestowed on them unique life experiences.
Stephan Zhang completed his high school years at home and managed to achieve an ATAR score of 99.95 in 2015.
In Victoria, ATARs are calculated by the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) when you complete the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE).
Stephan's VCE results, which were tallied up to 50, included an impressive 46 in English, 48 in maths method, 47 in specialist maths, 50 in chemistry, and 48 in physics.
His ATAR score saw him enroll at the University of Melbourne, where he completed his Bachelor’s degree in science and then his undergraduate degree majoring in applied mathematics in 2019.
He’s now pursuing further training in applied mathematics at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada.
“My interests are in applied math, specifically in applications of mathematics to problems in biology, so it's called systems biology, and I'll see how it goes,” he tells SBS Mandarin.
He says that homeschooling is like baking, there are some people who know how to do it, but not everyone will be good at it.
“It really depends on who is doing it. I go on to YouTube or the internet and I can look at these people who are really good at baking bread. Right? And then I go and do it myself and it's a disaster.”
Stephan was born in Melbourne and he spent much of his childhood moving around Australia with his family, who migrated from China.
Stephan Zhang Source: Supplied
Financial struggles forced his parents to move around in search of work, which saw him land at a rural Victorian primary school, where he says he felt isolated because he was the only Asian child.
In Stephan’s eyes, parents that choose to homeschool their children have their own reasons, and homeschooling has a different meaning to different families.
He recalls that his parents did their best to take care of him and his three younger siblings.
“I think one of the biggest reasons I was homeschooled was that my parents cared very much about what role they played in the upbringing of their children," he says.
“They had a strong idea of what values and what morals they wanted to impose upon their children.”
Homeschooled from Year 5, he still remembers learning maths with his mother, but admits, “I didn’t like the times tables".
He says that he had been a “lazy” kid until he reached Year 9.
“It was really only until then, that I decided to take to actually try hard with my studies.
“And the reason for that is because my parents over a very long period of time gave me the right attitude.”
So, how did his parents teach?
Despite the strong influence his parents had, Stephan says his studies in themselves were not his parents’ top priority.
“Of course, my parents wanted me to study, but they had the main priorities that they wanted me to be able to develop the values and the mindset that they wanted me to have.”
His parents were able to convey these qualities by talking to their children about things like politics, the weather, business, studies, or stories of their own childhood, which were experiences far removed from his own.
“To me and my siblings, they went through a lot of various challenges, as I'm sure you know, a lot of other migrants would have gone through.”
Stephan says these teachings led him and his siblings to think about the difficult experiences and to acknowledge how lucky they are to be in Australia.
He recalls that his parents also encouraged the children to read a wide selection of literature instead of only maths books.
Stephan Zhang and his family Source: Supplied
“So, for example, [we read] history or people's biographies. And because you can really learn a lot by reading about someone else's experiences.”
In his opinion, his parents' decision to homeschool provided him with the right attitude to learn, which “helped his studies in time”.
When he entered university in 2016, he even found that homeschooling made it much easier for him to adapt to the studies.
“This [studying in university] was very similar to what I was used to. There was not so much to be adapted to.”
As part of a homeschooling community in Melbourne, Stephan says he never found it hard to make new friends compared to other students who attend school regularly.
“I was always able to make friends pretty easily,” he says, while mentioning during his undergraduate years he knew people from different backgrounds and with different interests who were really very supportive.
According to data from state and territory education departments, there are about 22,000 children registered for homeschooling in Australia.
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