The Clarks are just one in a wave of families choosing to leave school in favour of home education. They have decided to take a gap year and sail up the east coast of Australia, which means for the rest of the year, their classroom will be the sea.
“So one of the good things about homeschooling is you can choose your own electives,” says Hayley Clark, mother of Jess, 15 and Linden, 17.
Jess has completed her first-aid certificate, while Linden is learning 3D printing electronics which he uses to help make replacement parts for the boat. And of course, the entire family, from Nelson Bay, near Newcastle in NSW, is learning how to sail.
The Clark family is setting sail up the east coast of Australia. Credit: SBS
Home education has been on the rise in Australia for years. But COVID-19 and lockdowns saw the numbers jump dramatically, especially in Queensland which saw a 46.8 per cent increase in home education enrolments from 2019 to 2021.
NSW saw a 19.1 per cent increase in homeschooling over the same period, while in Victoria, homeschooling went up 20.2 per cent, according to figures from the Home Education Association.
Experts give three main reasons for the rise in home education enrolments. The first is anti-vaccination and vaccine hesitancy, the second is a fear of kids catching COVID-19 and the third is families' frustrations at going in and out of lockdown throughout the pandemic.
Karina is homeschooling her daughter Liza, 9, in Sydney. Like parents and children across the country, they were navigating the complexities of school in and out of lockdown.
“I just found it a disruption because kids … had to adapt to a new process every time,” says Karina.
Home education is on the rise across Australia. Credit: Home Education Association Inc. and SBS
“Parents and children and young people all had amazing support from teachers, schools, all of the staff across schools. When you home educate you are on your own,” says Dr Brunker, an expert in education and a home educator herself.
Karina says it has taken some time to get into the swing of homeschooling and organise all the resources she needs to educate Liza. She also needs to spend more time helping her with work. But says she is enjoying having more quality family time.
“So of course you are spending more time with your kid. But I'm okay with that. I'm actually enjoying that,” she says.
Liza herself has no complaints about home education. Although she does miss her teachers and friends.
“Well you don't get to see as much [sic] people as you do in schooling and I've … never moved schools before,” she says.
“And that's natural,” says Karina. “And I said, okay, Liza…, we can just organise a lot of play dates. We can organise … communication with you and your friends.”
Dr Brunker says it’s a myth that home educated kids aren’t as well socialised.
“Some people think that home education kids are home all day, every day,” she says. “They're not. They're out and about, which is one of the reasons why research has demonstrated that home educated kids are often better socialised than kids at school.”
That's not a view shared by Tom Alegounarias, the former chair of the NSW Education Standards Authority, which among other things is responsible for the regulation of homeschooling. He says school is an important part of socialising young people.
“Schooling takes the academic and the social development and the cultural development … and puts the students in a position where they learn to take from those. But they also learn how to give to those,” he says. “And it simply can't be done in the small scale of home or interacting in small groups.”
With time, and as we become more used to managing COVID-19, Dr Brunker says it’s possible this spike in interest in home education will slow.
“Because there will be people who have chosen homeschooling based on their experience of schooling from home and then discover, 'oh, this is actually vastly different. This isn't what we thought we were getting ourselves into' and return to school,” she says.
“I do, however, think that we're going to see home education enrolments continue to increase over time.”
In the meantime, Karina and Liza will be experimenting with new ways of learning.
“So we are giving it a try,” says Karina. “I'm not sure if it's going to be successful or not. We'll see how we go.”
And the Clark family will see where they land after their time at sea.
“So if at the end of the year, they're finding, what we're doing is still beneficial for them and … they want to continue, then we'll absolutely look at those options,” says Hayley.
