Thursday, February 24, 2011

What are some benefits and sources for home schooling in australia


What are some benefits and sources for home schooling in australia?
ive just started home schooling, im in year nine now. I'm really struggling to find the motivation to work and learn. What are some online ways of schooling myself, through all subjects necessary. Also does my mother still have the $1500 dollar tax deductible like she did when i was attending conventional school. Do we get any other tax or money benefits from the government. The online schooling must be free please. i would greatly appreciate the help :) if you want to talk with me you can email me, (adrian.spence@live.com) and please don't say homeschooling wont work, because its prooven that it does. Any helps appreciated. any negative answers will be repported.
Home Schooling - 2 Answers
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1 :
There is no such thing as free online schooling in Australia. For the huge majority of kids who want to do online school the only option is to join one of the private Christian schools who offer an online option. If you live in Qld you might be able to join their School of Distance Education (part online & part correspondence, i.e. through the post) as a 'by choice' student, but again you'd have to pay school fees, currently approx $2,000, to do so. Legally and officially online schooling is *not* homeschooling in Australia. It is Distance Education (or 'school at home'). You would still be enrolled as a fulltime school student and your legal status would be no different from how it was while you were attending your conventional school. Hence you and your mum'd keep all the monies, benefits etc that you got previously for going to conventional school. The only different/extra money that you can get for being online/home educated is the textbook allowance (previously paid to your school). However if you change to an online school or started homeschooling during the school year, your previous school will have already had your allowance and your mum won't get it again. Hopefully your local H.E.U. has already explained this to you but if your mum wants it, she'll have to go back to your previous school and ask them for a pro-rata share of your allowance, based on however long the school year still had to run when you left. Beyond those few private schools there really is no outside agency in Australia that's going to get you motivated or keep you on track. Don't know how you're homeschooling but there are a few companies from whom you can buy ready made curricula etc if you're struggling for lack of a cohesive plan. DownUnder Lit, Golden Beetle and Aussie Homeschool supplies are the main ones that spring to my mind. None of them will tell you what to do when nor check up on whether you're actually bothering to do it though. Ultimately, in order to make a go of homeschooling you just have to learn how to motivate and discipline yourself, maybe with help from your mum to start off with. How you do that is entirely up to you. Some people go better with a 'carrot approach' (when I finish these lessons I'm going to reward myself with x, y or z), while others find they go better under the 'stick' (I have to get this, this and this lesson finished before I go and watch telly, surf the web, go outside, whatever). Having said all that tho. you should not expect the transition from being taught at school to learning at home to be easy, immediate or seamless. It takes time to make the change. In fact it is always said that for every year you've spent in school you'll need at least a month to make the swap, so if you've spent the previous nine years in a school environment you should not now expect home ed to really click or your motivation for learning to fall into place just like that, at the drop of a hat. That could take until you've been out of school for at least nine months. The skills you've developed and used for learning in school won't really help you that much in learning successfully at home. Making the change from one to the other is an intellectual process of its own and 1) it takes time and 2) it has to be gone through in order that you can start to recall and re-learn the skills associated with self directed learning, including that all-important ability to motivate yourself.
2 :
According to Google, it's somewhat of a gray area, but I'd be happy to do more research if you want to message me. I spent about 10 minutes looking around but it's not an easy answer. Again, feel free to message me and I hope you are successful in what you are looking for.
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