Monthly Archives: March 2024

Homeschooling is becoming mainstream

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Homeschooling is becoming mainstream in many countries including the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, where demand is increasing and well-established legal frameworks are in place. In the USA about 3 million students (6% of total) were homeschooled in 2021-2022, an increase of 25% from 2019-2022 and a step increase from the trend growth rate of 2-8% per year since the 1990’s.

Why homeschool?

Research from the National Center for Education Statistics from 2022 shows that four of the five most popular reasons why parents decide to homeschool their children are social-cultural rather than academic:

  • concerns about the school environment (safety, drugs, peer pressure)
  • wanting to provide moral instruction
  • emphasis on a family life together
  • wanting to provide religious instruction.

In the meantime, growth in the market for education technology solutions, in part further stimulated by the pandemic, has ensured that good quality learning resources are available at scale in the home environment, thereby lowering this particular former barrier to homeschooling.

“Old school”, “new school”, “not school”?

The trend towards homeschooling reminded me of the scenario planning we had done at Sanoma about the future of education some 15 years ago, especially considering three main scenarios i) “old school” ii) “new school” and iii) “not school”. I had personally not expected the “not school” model to break through due to the high value-add of the professional teacher and the high economic and organisational implications for the family (typically requiring one parent to stay at home).  I had expected technology to underpin the further development of all three scenarios but had not foreseen the pandemic nor the increased polarisation of society at the time, which are surely factors that have made some impact on the growth of homeschooling.

I wonder what the trend to homeschooling might mean for homeschooled children and families? What impact will it have on public education systems and society as a whole?

Should we take the child out of the school, or bring the parent into the pedagogy?

School is in some ways already a limited intervention in the learning and development of a child, after all more than 80% of their time is spent outside of school. To what extent might approaches that encourage greater parental engagement in education help to support the learning of the child and help to remedy some of the social and cultural concerns that some parents have about schools?

It seems likely that more hybrid models might emerge, combining the professional and economic benefits of the school with the social and cultural engagement of the family.  Typically, an encouraging home environment, a high level of personal attention and more personalisation, tend to support learning.  Have we “outsourced” too much to schools? Especially in a world of increasing teacher shortages, might greater involvement of parents be part of the solution?

How big is the global teacher shortage?

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According to UNESCO in a report published this week, we need to attract no less than 44 million additional teachers into the profession to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030.

¡Viva la profesora!

Put in to context, that’s more than half the size of the current global workforce of teachers (about 77M) and roughly the population of Spain!

Hello, Goodbye

The gap is caused by two main factors (with the impact and underlying drivers differing significantly by country):

  1. Expansion as demographics push education systems to grow (42% of the 44M), and
  2. Attrition due to teachers leaving the profession (58% of the 44M).

About 1/3 of the total demand for new teachers by 2030 comes from Sub-Saharan Africa (15M additional teachers). This is driven to a significant extent by demographics and growing access to secondary education (62% of the gap is to fill new teaching posts). However 93% of the 4.8M additional teachers required in Europe and North America, are needed because of attrition.

Push, Pull, Personal

There are clearly many factors that affect teacher recruitment, retention, job satisfaction and productivity, often driven by local dynamics. Broadly, the report highlights several “push factors” (e.g. working conditions, teacher well-being), “pull factors” (e.g. remuneration and professional development) and “personal reasons” (e.g. retirement, health, family circumstances) that influence whether people join the profession and how long they stick with it.

Can AI solve the problem?

There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all answer to finding 44M new teachers in the coming years. AI can surely help in many areas, such as optimising the recruitment and deployment of the teaching workforce, and saving time on administrative tasks for teachers so they can focus on teaching (about half of the working time of a typical teacher is spent on non-teaching tasks outside the classroom).

However, beware of solutions that completely substitute teachers. The human teacher plays an essential role in the process of learning and coaching. Parents are unlikely to leave their (especially younger) children in the hands of a robot. Larger class sizes will likely exacerbate the negative “push factors” in the teacher workplace.

In my view, solutions that super-charge rather than disintermediate teachers are most likely to succeed.

Imagine all the Teachers

Imagine the positive impact we can make on the prosperity, well-being and sustainability of the next generation across the globe when we ensure universal access to primary and secondary education. On the other hand, imagine what declining levels of literacy and numeracy might mean, not only in a faraway land but in your own neighbourhood.

This is a high impact, solvable challenge. We should give it the priority it needs.