After COVID-19, the advantages of home-schooling
At least 15,000 families have chosen this method of education because of lower costs for large families and greater interest and involvement in children’s education. With parents and tutors as educators, greater attention is paid to children’s own aptitudes and their families’ specific religious or cultural visions. The Santvana community offers one example.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) - Home-schooling has a long history in India. Now it is undergoing a boom, and not only because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced students to follow online classes.
“During the period of lockdown, when classes started online, many parents found out about homeschooling,” said Veronica, a pioneer in home-schooling, speaking to AsiaNews. Now “we are receiving different enquiries” about it.
Veronica is a university student in journalism, and a member of Santvana (consolation), a lay missionary community, legally approved by the archbishop of Delhi. Headquartered in the federal capital, it has branches in other states, like Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.
All the children (about 15) of the members of the Santvana community are into home-schooling. Veronica studied under this system until high school (Grade 12).
Home-schooling is nothing new, but it went through a renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s, when educational reformers were dissatisfied with the quality of mass education in industrial cities.
Home-schooling, also known as home education, educates children at home or in a variety of places other than public schools. In this non-formal system, parents, tutors and students themselves are the educators.
By promoting self-learning, this system allows students to focus on the issues most related to their tastes and preferences.
Many online groups like Alternative schoolers and Homeschoolers in India support this system with most of their members in India’s main cities.
Other groups exist online, including Alternative Education India, Pune Homeschoolers, Swashikshan-Indian Association of Homeschoolers, the Cascade Family Learning Society, and the Society for Home Schooled Children in Chennai.
In addition to online resources, home-schooling advocates hold conferences and meetings. They also offer apprenticeships, as well as many other group activities to share skills and knowledge on a regular basis.
Many home schoolers follow the standard curricula set by the Central Board of Secondary Education, the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), or International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE). Apparently, IGCSE and NIOS are the most popular.
Like other Santvana members, Veronica’s parents Alexy and Shiny Pallan opted for home-schooling for two main reasons, namely the high cost of education for large families, and the increased involvement in their children’s education and development.
Some Santvana families chose home-schooling to better monitor what their children learn and how they are educated.
The system is aimed at better catering to children’s aptitudes and abilities, to provide an education from a specific religious or moral position, and to take advantage of the efficiency of one-to-one learning between educator and pupil.
“By following the home-schooling system, I and my four siblings were able to focus on our interest areas and could gather basic knowledge in all the secular subjects like mathematics, science, geography etc.,” Veronica told AsiaNews.
Home schoolers take the same Grade 10 to 12 exams as students in public schools.
“More than 15,000 families in India follow the home-schooling system,” said Jini Lobo, an organiser for the Santvana community in Mysore (Karnataka), speaking to AsiaNews.
“The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many parents to choose home schooling for their children,” she explained. At present, “Many families are approaching us to know more about the system in order to understand the admission procedures.”
In her view, the number of home-schoolers is bound to rise after COVID-19. She and her colleagues are preparing to expand their mission into all their communities.
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