With my son getting to the age now where it is time to think about what school he will go to, I have been wondering more about home education.
Reading an article that says the working hours of Australian secondary school teachers has increased, with classroom time (19.9 hours per week teaching in class) being below the international average (20.6 hours).
There is no denying that our public school system is under resourced. Both financially, and physically.
Interestingly, the number of Queensland children being home educated has nearly tripled in the past 5 years.
On top of that, cyber-bullying is now such a problem that the Qld government is spending millions with an “Anti-Cyberbullying Taskforce”.
Combine that with the pressures of NAPLAN, and who knows what else, it is entirely possible that we are actually failing our children.
Ideally, I would love to point the finger at State governments, because education is their responsibility, though it wouldn’t actually achieve anything.
Or even start a discussion.
So the question is, do I throw my son into all of that, and hope that he doesn’t fall through the cracks or become a statistic somewhere.
Or do I keep him out of it, and give him a possibly better schooling experience?
