Home-Schooling like the name suggest is the taking on of your child/ward’s academic teaching and training responsibilities personally or hiring a private tutor at home. The goal is to privately teach/train your child at home following the government’s established academic curriculum either through the Nursery and Primary school level, then release them to government/private schools for their secondary education or extending it to the secondary level as well. Then they do their University entry exams to go to their chosen higher institution.
WHERE DID HOME-SCHOOLING BEGIN AND HOW?
Home-schooling is widely practiced in the US ,Europe and some mostly developed parts of the world. The recorded success rate of this practice at least its a prove that its a viable option. But where and how did it begin? What necessitated it? How have these parents been able to cover for areas like child-to-child interaction, extra-curricula activities etc apart from the normal academic curriculum?
…
IS HOME-SCHOOLING A VIABLE OPTION NIGERIA?
For a developing country like Nigeria,is home-schooling a viable option? All things been equal, will any of our Millennial couple choose to drop their career, howbeit for a few years to home-school their kids?
First of, not many of our young couple here in Nigeria can even consider this because of our low income level whereby all hands are required to earn as much as possible to take care of the family.Therefore,home-schooling is not even an option. But for Millennial couples who are privileged to belong in the high income bracket, its an option they can consider if they are ready to do the hardwork (teaching is not beans..LOL!).
But the real question is – is it a viable option? A conversation around this topic was recently started by a famous Youtuber in Nigeria Sisiyemmie, where she asked the question on her social media platform : “ I wonder if Nigerians home-school their kids?
The responses she got from some of her followers reveal that some Nigerians have already started home-schooling their kids.
Some from their responses suggest its a viable option but confess that its a lot of work.Others however gave concerns of not knowing how to cover the area of child-to-child interaction which is only possible in a school environment with lots of other kids around. Others say it doesn’t matter as the child will make up for this when they eventually move to secondary school or the University.
HOME-SCHOOLING VIS-A-VIS GOVERNMENT EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND REGULATIONS.
If home-schooling is a viable option, what about government policy and regulations on education in Nigeria? How does it impact your child when you eventually decide to enroll him/her in a secondary school or University?
We know that the requirement for entry level into secondary schools is passing the COMMON ENTRANCE EXAM. So if your child is able to scale this successfully,i don’t see why he/she should be denied entry into a secondary school of their choice.This also goes for admission into the University.If you have successfully home-schooled your child to the secondary level and he is able to pass the required WAEC/GCE/NECO exam as well as JAMB.we see no reason why he/she should be denied admission into the University.
But what does the Nigerian government’s educational policy/regulation has to say about this?
……
ALL THINGS BEEN EQUAL – WILL YOU DO IT?
If you were financially stable, is this something you will consider doing for your kids? Or is this something you will consider doing for the sake of finances itself? We all know that education even at the Nursery and primary level have become pretty expensive. With an average Nursery school kid in Nigeria paying as much as 50k – 250k per term ,not to talk of primary or secondary school child, is it something you can do just to spare your family that expense?
We know you still have to buy the textbooks and notebooks and some training materials even if you are home-schooling but this will be nothing compared to the fees a regular school charges.
There are other reasons why you may consider home-schooling aside finances . The standard of education in Nigeria is not so good right now so you may decide to home-school your child may be because you feel you can do a better job than some of our teachers.
Or you decide to hire a private tutor for your kids just so they can focus on teaching and training them alone.
Or will you do it just to cure your paranoia? If you are the parent that is constantly living in fear of what can happen to your child in the school environment. The bullying, fear of Child molestation and rape or maltreatment.
Would you do it for any of the above reasons or some others?Please leave a comment below let’s know your thoughts on this.Thanks.