Home education need not be expensive. You can home educate with a library card, the resources you already have at home and free resources in your community. An Internet connection is also extremely useful if you can afford it. Many commercial homeschooling supplies are available if families choose to use them and prices vary. So [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Getting Started' Category
A Matter of Style
Confused about the home ed styles you’ve been reading about?
By Susan Wight
Breathe easy, there is no one right way and you can change if necessary. Here is a simple guide to get you started. Many home education styles exist. Some are formal, structured programs and some are less formal, child-directed approaches. It is just a matter [...]
Home Education and the Law
Home education is legal throughout Australia. Parents do not need to have teaching qualifications.
Home Education has always been legal in Victoria but the legal situation changed in 2007 when the The Education and Training Reform Act 2006 came into effect on 1st July.
Under its terms home educators are required to register with the Victorian Registration [...]
Centrelink Parenting Payments – All States
Registered home educators are exempt from the Welfare to Work laws which apply to parents with children over the age of six.
Registered homeschooling is one of the exemption categories along with large families (four or more children aged between 6 and 16), parents caring for foster children and children with significant disabilities.
For more information contact [...]
Registration under the New Education Act
The Education and Training Reform Act 2006, came into effect in Victoria on 1st July 2007.
It requires home educators to: “register children for homeschooling in accordance with the regulations and to ensure that the child receives instruction in accordance with the regulations.”
There are two levels of legal requirements for home education:
– the Legislation (The Education and [...]
Home Education: A Choice for Life
By Lyn Loxton
There has always been a lot of confusion with the public’s perception of what homeschooling is. As the name implies, people expect to do schooling in the home and therefore expect to be able to purchase homeschooling as a package for their children.
Many are often quite confused and even alarmed when they find out that homeschooling is in fact all about choices – choices that they have to make and new ideas they have to think about.
People consider homeschooling their children for many reasons – philosophical, religious, travel and for many these days, the total frustration of seeing them hurt and unhappy in school. Until these reasons force us to explore new ways, we have never really given much thought to our children’s education – education happens in schools, it happened to us, therefore it will happen to our children – full stop.
Click on the title to read more…
Read the rest of this entry »Preschool Pressure
I always say my kids were homeschooled from birth, because they never went to school and they were learning from the day they were born. Yet I didn’t “school” them during the years from birth to age 5; we certainly did a lot – played inside and outside, made crafts, painted, colored, I read to [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Other Ways
By Dindy Vaughan, Ringwood Victoria
Not every child is happy at school.
Some struggle along grudgingly, some fight the system, some opt out and refuse to achieve; and mostly their parents worry.
In many cases it comes down to ‘school refusal’. The state of Victoria currently has not hundreds, but thousands of school-age children who are simply refusing [...]
What does it mean to Homeschool?
Homeschooling is an increasingly popular educational alternative in which children learn outside of conventional schools under the general supervision of their parents.Homeschooling means different things [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Informal Learning
by Alan Thomas
Infants start learning informally from (or before?) birth, mainly through interaction with the mother or other caregivers. Part of this is learning how to behave in culturally appropriate ways, e.g., how to deal with emotions, how to interact with others in the family and wider community, and the acquisition of cultural values and [...]