BENGALURU: During the year-long school closure, more parents took to homeschooling their children, and the trend has led to attempts at giving this amorphous movement some structure. M S Indira, founder of Abheek Academy that aims to create an alternative model of education, started a dedicated resource centre in December to assist parents who want to educate their kids at home. She is approached by parents who have been contemplating the switch for a while, and even those who are forced to home school their children after they lost jobs.
“The pandemic had exposed them to staying home with their children and online classes. These are qualified parents, who started seeing home schooling as a real possibility. I get three to four calls a day, and I guide parents to create a portfolio for their children to document their activities -- where, with whom and what learning takes place. This is a substitute for the certificates that schools provide,” she said.
Homeschooling consultant Deepa Naidu is coming up with a system to monitor the screentime of children and introduce activity-based learning on alternate days. “Therapeutic classes such as music, art, and dance are being added as options in the package for homeschoolers,” she said.
Sandhya, who runs a Facebook group of over 53,000 parents from regular schools, and a few thousand homeschooling parents, said that those who choose to homeschool in the current situation, are mostly focussed on ensuring that their children don’t fall behind in academics before they get back to school.
Joshi, a parent, said his peers now realise that it is not hard to home school. “Some even wonder why they should shell out a huge amount for something they can do themselves. There’s still a fear of the virus spreading to elderly family members, so younger children are kept home,” he added.