Should homeschooling be encouraged in Kenya?

  

Date Posted: 11/12/2011 6:12:49 AM

Posted By: STRICTLYURBAN  Membership Level: Silver  Total Points: 209

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It is also referred to as home education. It is the educating of your child at home sometimes by the parent or a hired tutor. It is an alternative to public and private schools.
Homeschooling mainly depends on certain factors such as the availability of time, the parent should ensure that he or she has enough time to prepare lessons, grade papers, take field trips with the student. Availability of teaching material, the tutor in this case the parent should ensure that they are conversant with different curricula and study courses. Socializing is also an important factor; homeschooling enables the parents to control their child’s social interactions.

Benefits of homeschooling in Kenya

Homeschooling enables for a flexible adoption of different unit studies, easy incorporation of online education where parents access specialized material and resources that are effective in the learning process. The resources mostly include study courses, games that are educational, online tests, online tutoring; these may be accessed through educational sites such as Kenyaplex.com.

It also ensures a one to one teaching method between the tutor and a student, which is rather difficult to enable in a public or private school where a teacher handles a large number of students, which makes it difficult for them to monitor individual progress. Educational opportunities such as museums, national archives, national parks and other community resources are easier to take advantage of with this type of schooling, since costs are minimized as opposed to schools where large number of students are involved and costs such as travel costs, accommodation are expensive.

This form of schooling is adequate especially for disabled students who might find it difficult to attend school; through traveling long distances, the schools might not have disability compliant facilities such as ramps. Also children with chronic illnesses; they need specialized care therefore easier to home school them.
Mostly, majority of the time in private and public schools is not spent on academic activities, it is spent in waiting lines, waiting for other students to catch up so as to move on to the next topic, teachers going on strike; especially in Kenya. These factors usually lead to students lagging behind on their studies and others losing their enthusiasm in learning. Home schooling cuts out these and ensures that a student is taken at her or his own speed.

Although it is a new concept in Kenya, it is slowly catching up. In February 2011 the Ministry of Education launched a policy that would allow for the Provision of Alternative Basic Education and Training. Through this policy homeschooling people can lobby for the full recognition since the policy only caters for students living under difficult conditions.

Historically, it is in line to say that before colonization Africans practiced homeschooling through the tribal education system, our grandparents were educated through a socialization process from generation to generation. It was so until the British introduced formal education.

In my opinion homeschooling is a better way of ensuring that your children are well-educated and turn out to be productive individuals in the society.

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