Home schooling is the education of children inside the home 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.

"Homeschooling" is the term commonly used in North America, whereas "home education" is commonly used in the United Kingdom, Europe, and in many Commonwealth countries.

Before the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws, most childhood education was done by families and local communities. In many developed countries, homeschooling is a legal alternative to public and private schools. In other nations, homeschooling remains illegal or restricted to specific conditions, as recorded by homeschooling international status and statistics.

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 centers/tuition centers in your local area. But please bare in mind that these private learning/tuition centers are there to help, they are NOT a formal school.

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.

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 to 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/Grade6.

These certificates might be helpful if you suddenly can’t cope with the teaching nor have anymore time to complete the secondary schools, you certainly need Those certificates.

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.

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)

once your child is ready to sit for the final exam, search for the nearest exam centers in your local area. Your 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.

It is always good to know all the exams registration key dates,So you don’t missed out the registration closing dates. Bookmark thisexams registration key dates,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 exam 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 educations for your child – Congratulation.

You need to have the strength and stamina to keep going for 10/11 years (starting from year 1-year11) until your child obtain the one and only official exam certificates in your child’s life, that could be used for further studies – either A Level or any other equivalent level.

Useful Information and Links

The Cambridge Pre-U Guide for Parents is a great resource for answering any difficult questions parents may have about one of the fastest growing A-level alternative qualifications in the UK.

Find a Cambridge school.

exams registration key dates