5 Important Advantages of Homeschooling
Thinking of homeschooling your children? Check out these five important advantages of homeschooling to learn more about whether it’s right for your family.
You love your children and want the best for them. But there’s a part of you that feels that the institutional education system doesn’t exactly feel the same way about your child as you do — and it never will. Considering the many advantages of homeschooling, you may want to consider making your home your child’s school this year.
Research shows that more families in Canada are opting for homeschooling than ever before. And although the main reasons for homeschooling years ago were primarily religion or ideology-driven, more parents are choosing this schooling option for pragmatic reasons.
Thinking of homeschooling your children? Here’s a rundown of five important advantages of homeschooling for your family.
1. Advantages of Homeschooling Include Customized Education
This is one of the biggest benefits of homeschooling. A homeschool environment focuses on a child as an individual, so you can easily tailor your child’s education to his or her personality and capabilities. For instance, perhaps your daughter is excellent at math. Then why not accelerate her education in this area? Meanwhile, maybe your son struggles with science. You can simply bring in extra resources to help him with this subject.
In addition, with homeschooling, you can make sure that your child is taught based on how he or she learns best. For visual learners, it makes sense to incorporate visual elements into their instruction, for example.
The problem with the institutional education system is that its approach to teaching children is essentially cookie cutter. With homeschooling, you can offer education that is designed specifically for your child — a sweet change for both of you!
2. Unbeatable Teacher-to-Student Ratio
Imagine watching your child sitting in a classroom with 25 other students, trying to keep up. No parent wants to see his or her child get lost in the shuffle. Unfortunately, this happens far too often in the institutional education setting. Fortunately, with homeschooling, your child has a teacher-to-student-ratio that simply can’t be beaten.
Research shows that this ratio is highly important when it comes to teaching children effectively. But other essential factors in your child’s educational success are how closely connected your child is to the person guiding his or her instruction, and how dedicated this person is to the child. Homeschooling reigns supreme in both of these areas.
Who knows your child and is more committed to his or her success than you are? And when your child can receive a teacher’s full attention rather than having to compete for a teacher’s attention with 24 other children, you can be sure that he or she will absorb more and feel better about his or her learning environment.
3. Consistency
Since you’re the one managing your child’s education long term when you choose to homeschool, your child’s education will be consistent. This is one of the sometimes overlooked advantages of homeschooling.
As the facilitator of your child’s education, you can make sure that every topic your children learn are connected to what they have already learned before. Likewise, you can use their background and experiences to design educational activities in the future.
4. Quality Education
You want your child to be educated, right? Fortunately, that is the main objective of homeschooling. And it shows. Research demonstrates that homeschooled children generally achieve higher scores on standardized tests than do those who are not homeschooled.
On top of that, post-secondary schools often pursue homeschoolers simply because these students tend to be well prepared for the rigours of modern-day higher education.
5. Flexibility and Efficiency
If you want your child to learn more flexibly and efficiently, you can’t go wrong with homeschooling.
Here’s why.
Homeschooling enables your child to learn at his or her own optimal rate. You don’t have to worry about a teacher attempting to keep everybody at the same pace or grade level. When this happens, students who are already ahead will only become bored and unstimulated. And that’s the opposite of what you want for your child. Meanwhile, if your child needs instruction to be slowed down, you can easily indulge this need appropriately. On top of that, you can make sure that your child learns at the time of day that is best for him or her. For example, for your son, perhaps early-morning learning works best. But maybe nighttime instruction is best for your night-owl daughter. Either way, you don’t have to fight against their natural body clocks. This means you can get much more done in shorter time frames.
This philosophy is completely opposite of what you’ll find in the traditional school setting. While breaks in a classroom are often viewed as depriving children of valuable time to learn, breaks in your home might help to speed up learning.
And one more thing: When you allow your children to learn at home, they don’t have to waste their time on institutional processes that actually do deprive your children of valuable education time. For instance, there’s no more waiting in line, changing classes constantly or travelling in big groups from one classroom to the next. The focus is on your child and his or her education alone.
What to Expect
With a high-quality homeschooling program, your elementary school student can receive help from multiple subject-based instructors. These teachers will guide them through their various subjects. In middle and high schools, your child won’t have to worry about having real-time teachers in a top-notch program. After all, by the time children reach these grade levels, they should be able to direct nearly all of their work themselves. They can simply use instructors for tutoring help as needed, grades and feedback. But the idea is that they will be able to teach themselves — a skill that will take them far in their future schooling and in life in general.
How We Can Help
We offer the unique opportunity for students to learn at home in Saskatchewan and other parts of the world. We have created our school based on the foundational principle of not just educating our students but empowering them.
Contact us to find out more about how our program can help your child to learn flexibly and capitalize on his or her unique traits in the years ahead.
