Pros & Cons of Homeschooling for Students

Pros & Cons of Homeschooling for Students

Every education system offers great opportunities for children to gain new knowledge and skills, as well as harness their own unique qualities and interests. Homeschooling is a model of imparting learning and has its own pros & cons. One of the major challenges of homeschooling is that it brings in a major lifestyle change. This change is not just observed in students but parents too. Parents are expected to take on the duties and responsibilities of both a teacher and an administrator. They will have to complete lessons, organize field trips, coordinate activities with other parents, and make sure that all the learning needs of the child are met. On the other hand, children enjoy bonding with familiar people and develop their own ways of learning at a pace convenient to them. However, parents may end up restricting the child's learning to their own personal choices which are when this system becomes skewed. The social aspect could be challenged in the home environment. Some children may respond well to structure, and therefore it may become challenging for those learners. This form of schooling may affect the parent-child relationship, as the parent will constantly be seeking accountability, compromising the emotional aspect of the relationship.

Overall, homeschooling may help in developing social-emotional and spiritual aspects of the child, however, the cognitive aspect may require more collaborated & peer learning.

Benefits of Homeschooling for Students

The global online education market is projected to witness a CAGR of 9.23% during the forecast period to reach a total market size of US$319.167 billion in 2025, increasing from US$187.877 billion in 2019. Increasing penetration of internet in many regions across the globe is a major factor driving the market growth. Growing adoption of cloud-based solutions coupled with huge investments by major market players towards enhancing the security and reliability of cloud-based education platforms is further increasing its adoption among the end-users.

For a while now, online education has been a good option for students who – for various reasons – can’t access physical classroom learning. It democratizes the availability of opportunity and acts as a great leveller. Technology brings in asynchronicity and allows students to learn at their own pace. Online courses and learning processes offer students greater control over their own learning by enabling them to work at their own pace. More engaging multimedia content, greater access to their instructor and fellow classmates via online chat, and less likelihood of outside scheduling conflicts can contribute to improved retention metrics. Online courses also tend to include more frequent assessments. The more often students are assessed, the better their instructors can track progress and intervene when needed. Online platforms could be leveraged for lifelong learning and in service training programs.

How and When to Start Homeschooling in India?

While homeschooling is beginning to become commonly followed format globally and has also gained some momentum in India too, it still remains as a tiny minority movement because of the extraordinary investment required in the form of time, dedication, patience and relearning capabilities on the part of one or increasingly, both parents — which may prove to be an uphill task for two-income households. Therefore, despite the prevalent ‘factory model of education’ in India, the majority would prefer bricks-and-mortar schools.

Homeschooling children requires considerable financial sacrifice, discipline and extraordinary dedication from parents. Owing to India’s dubious distinction of having one of the world’s highest rates of adult illiteracy coupled with lack of basic amenities, resources and infrastructure in most parts of the country imagining a seamless switch from the structured environment of a school to the informal home setting that requires access to digital learning resources and the resilience and engagement to learn on their own is a long shot. We have a long way to go. Having said this, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has amplified these inequities in this time of crisis, this moment also holds the possibility that we won’t return to the inequitable status quo when things return to “normal”. It is the nature of our collective and systemic responses to the disruptions that will determine how we are affected by them.

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