(* The correct use of the “home school” term:
Home school is on its way to becoming a compound. For now, when home school functions as a noun, it is still two words, without a hyphen. When it functions as a verb, it usually takes a hyphen (?) e.g.: I home-school my children; my children are home-schooled. “Homeschooling” is the term commonly used in North America, whereas “home education” is more commonly used in the United Kingdom, elsewhere in Europe, and in many Commonwealth countries.)
Note: CIE (Cambridge International Examination board) has its name changed to CAIE (Cambridge Assessment International Education) since October 2017.
Home schooling or home education is a form of education based at home. You can teach your child at home, either full or part-time. This is called home schooling.
Parents give many different reasons to home-school their children. The three (major) reasons selected by parents of more than two-thirds of students were concern about the school environment, to provide religious or moral instruction, and dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at traditional schools.
Numerous studies have found that home-schooled students on average outperform their peers on standardized tests. Home schooling Achievement, a study conducted by National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) in the US, a home schooling advocacy group, supported the academic integrity of home schooling. Among the home-schooled students who took the tests, the average home-schooled student outperformed his public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects. The study also indicates that public school performance gaps between minorities and genders were virtually non-existent among the home-schooled students who took the tests.
Choosing an appropriate curriculum for home schoolers is extremely important. Parents that chose home schooling are usually not satisfied with their local schools’ syllabus. As such, IGCSE becomes increasingly popular as home school curriculum due to its high quality syllabus and being recognized worldwide.
Another BIG advantage of choosing IGCSE as home schooling curriculum is, home schoolers could sit for exams at any time whenever they are ready for exam, and in any British Councils worldwide or any registered Cambridge Schools which accept “Private Candidates”. List of registered Cambridge Schools can be found HERE.
IGCSE exams are available twice a year: in the May/June series or in the October/November series. The exam time table is being divided into different administrative zones. Search for your administrative zone HERE.
Home schooling is legal in many countries. Countries with the most prevalent home education movements include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Some countries have highly regulated home education programmes as an extension of the compulsory school system; others, such as Sweden and Germany, have outlawed it entirely.
Misunderstanding of Home Schooling
It has come to our attention that many private tuition centres in Malaysia are offering IGCSE programmes as “Home School” / “Homeschool” centres.
These private tuition centres are running the centres as a school. IGCSE is used as the main teaching curriculum, and there is a full-day “schooling schedule”, from Monday to Friday. Thus many parents misunderstood it as an alternative “school” to the Malaysian traditional school.
Since the fees are way much cheaper than the international schools which also offer the same IGCSE curriculum, parents are rushing to send their children to these private centres ? thinking that they are sending their children to a “formal school” offering IGCSE curriculum. They started this process from Year 1/Grade 1.
After some years, for some reasons, when these parents wanted to send their children to an international/private school or national government school for Secondary education, they could not admit their children into any formal secondary school. These formal secondary schools were asking them for a formal Primary school certificate, which is not available from these private tuition centres.
The below message is just one of the many messages that we received all these years from the desperate Malaysian parents who do not know what to do:
*****
Subject:
Please help!
Message:
Hi, my son is 12 years old and currently studying in a small learning
centre taking Cambridge curriculum / syllabus for his full day
learning. I am trying to apply a bigger private school for him where
they also offering Cambridge curriculum, but the problem here is they
now reluctant to accept my son as their reason is they prefer Malaysia
public school (which they don?t offer Cambridge curriculum at all). Can
you please help us to direct to them (since that bigger school also
using the syllabus of IGCSE), or give my son a test and get a primary
IGCSE certificate in order to have strong supporting document? Please
help. Much appreciate for your prompt reply.
*****
So how do you start the home schooling process?
Step 1: Decision
It is important to know that, when you start home schooling your children, either part time or full time, you as a parent is going to take up the responsibility to ensure your children is having the needed education.
If you are not able to educate your children full time, you could always get assistance from some private learning centres / tuition centres in your local area. But please bare in mind that these private learning/tuition centres are there to help, they are NOT a formal school.
Home education is a marathon. You can?t give up halfway before reaching the finish line; for example wanting to send your children ?back to school? when you feel you cannot or do not have time to continue the responsibility anymore. Chances are, your children would get rejected due to the absent of formal primary school certificates.
So you may wonder, when/what is the finish line?
The finish line is the final exam at the end of the secondary level education ? IGCSE / O Level.
It is NOT at the primary level. Most parents make this mistake, thinking they could home educate their children up to the primary level, then send them to a formal secondary school later.
This is called ‘half way marathon’. Primary level is not the finish line.
So, make up your mind that you will finish the marathon. You can also take the ‘half way marathon’ ? continue reading to find out how to do that.
Step 2: Choose Your Curriculum
You can always follow your local government school?s curriculum. Otherwise, IGCSE / O Level is a good choice for home schooling.
IGCSE syllabi are written for the current international audience. You will find interesting content addressing the global arena, as oppose to the more locally oriented curriculum such as O Level and GCSE.
Children who learn global facts at an early age would be more likely to be open minded and able to mix with and respect other cultures.
(This is NOT an advertising for IGCSE. We do NOT represent IGCSE, nor any other exam board. We are providing suggestions based on our years of experience in the international secondary education field and exam boards.)
Step 3: Plan Your Teaching Programmes
Once you have chosen your curriculum/exam board, you need to plan your teaching programmes from start to finish.
It might sound intimidating for a start, however, if you plan well, it would be very fun and rewarding.
Here are some suggestions you could use:
Primary Stage:
Generally, primary Year/Grade 1 would start from age 6/7, depending on which country you are residing. In our example, we will stick to age 7 as the standard Year/Grade 1 age for most of the countries worldwide.
You may choose to educate your child for 6 year primary programme ? that is a norm practice and minimum requirement internationally.
Your child would finish primary programme at age 12.
Your child would NOT obtain any primary school leaving certificate, nor any formal primary exams certificates.
If you think these certificates are important, you may plan to enter your child into a formal primary school at Year/Grade 5, just to proceed to Year/Grade 6 and sit for the formal primary exams.
The reason why you should do it at Year/Grade 5, that is because no schools in the world would take new students in Year/Grade 6.
These certificates might be helpful if you suddenly can?t cope with the teaching nor have anymore time to complete the secondary programmes by yourself, and want to register your child with any formal secondary schools, you certainly need those certificates.
This is for the ‘half way marathon’. Please put this in mind from the start.
Lower Secondary Stage:
Once you have accomplished primary programme, it?s time for you to start ?Lower Secondary? programme. At this point of time, it would be Year/Grade 7 for schooled children.
Lower Secondary programme can be quite flexible if your child has very strong basic and could cope faster.
The general Lower Secondary programme lasts for 3 years ? Year/Grade 7, 8 and 9.
If you think your child could do 2 years only, then proceed to the Upper Secondary programme, you are more than welcome to do so.
But please know that, we do not encourage speedy zooming through this stage just to get your child graduate faster. What?s the point at the end of the day? Is entering university at very young age a vital and meaningful goal to achieve? Guess not.
If your child follow the normal 3-year Lower Secondary programme, he/she would be 15 years old at the end of the programme.
If you make a short cut, just do a 2 year programme, then your child would be 14 years old at the end of the Lower Secondary programme.
Again, your child would NOT obtain any formal Lower Secondary certificates, nor this is required for the final exam in IGCSE / O Level.
This is where the stamina to keep going on for home education gets low, and problems would arise if you want to send your child to any formal second school. Since your child does not have any formal primary certificates (assuming you did not get one for them from the suggestion above), no schools would accept him/her.
Upper Secondary Stage:
This is a 2-year programme, generally. This is where the IGCSE / O Level programme starts. For the schooled students, it would be Year/Grade 10 and 11.
Again, you might accomplish the whole IGCSE / O Level programme in just 1 year ? that is entirely up to the capability of your child (not how parents want it, sorry 🙂 )
Once your child is ready to sit for the final exam, search for the nearest exam centres in your local area. Your local British Council is the best option for private candidates. If you can?t find any British Council near you, you can always try to approach any Cambridge School which accepts private candidates to sit for the exams HERE.
It is always good to know all the exams registration key dates, so you don?t missed out the registration closing dates. Bookmark this exams registration key dates page, and know all the dates by hard. 🙂
If your child follow the normal route, he/she would be 17 years old when he/she sits for the final exams. Otherwise, cutting short a year, would make him/her sitting for the exams at age 16 ? that?s the benefit of being home educated.
Finally, this is where your child obtain the official IGCSE / O Level certificates as a home-educated child. This marks the end of your journey in home education for your child ? congratulation!
As you can see now, home education is a marathon actually. You need to have the strength and stamina to keep going for 10/11 years (starting from Year 1-Year 11) until your child obtain the one and only official exam certificate in your child?s life, that could be used for further studies ? either A Level or any other equivalent level.
We hope this article could save some lives, as we are heart broken to hear stories like the above Malaysian parents.
All the best in your marathon!