Homeschooling: increasingly popular and especially reserved for children of highly educated parents

While baby Lotte drinks from Jessica Hilhorst (34) in a green-yellow baby carrier, the mother instructs another seven-year-old daughter in maths. “How much is 2/9 plus 3/9?” Piene briefly interrupts the fiddling with one of her alternate teeth and resolutely scratches the answer in the book. “Very good,” says Hilhorst, as she puts her baby carrier in position again.

Elsewhere in the family’s shelter, a well-insulated round tent in the rural residential area of ​​Almere-Hout, daughter Sarah (10) plucks a guitar on the bed. Hesitant tones of ‘Father Jacob’ resound through the room. On the tent wall hangs a book about ‘Little Mozart.’ Many items in the tent breathe something of education.

When the orange alarm goes off after fifteen minutes, Sarah stands up and grabs an iPad from a corner. Time for the next lesson! Back on the bed, she clicks on the icon for a listening program for French lessons. She wants to pick up as many words as possible before the family boards the train for a holiday to the south of France this weekend. L’homme boit, la femme lit (the man is drinking, the woman is reading), it sounds softly. When Sarah is lost for a moment, stepfather Huub van Eijndhoven (63) interrupts his work behind the ironing board and settles down next to her on the bed.

Already on vacation at the beginning of June

The contrast between intimate home education in the Arcadian wilderness of Almere-Hout and regular education could hardly be greater – at least in terms of image. Going on holiday at the beginning of June, while peers are toiling over their workbooks in sometimes full classrooms. A patient multitasking mother instead of a teacher who has to prepare thirty or more students for the next test moment.

“Yes, I really like it here,” says Sarah at the greeting. “There is a lot of home schooling here,” she says.

Not only in Almere, but also in other parts of the country, home education is moving along. Parents can appeal for an exemption from compulsory education if they feel that there are no schools in the area that give shape to their religious beliefs or beliefs. The number has tripled in the last ten years, from 575 children in school year 2013-2014 to 1,771 children in 2021-2022. It is still a fraction of the nearly one and a half million children in regular primary education.

In addition, there is another and larger group, so-called ‘home sitters’, children who are stuck in regular education.

With the growth of homeschooling, the phenomenon took on several faces. At first it was mainly Orthodox believers who kept their children at home; Muslims as well as Christians. Later on, many other movements were added: holistics, Seventh-day Adventists, objectivists.

Recently, educational lawyers have identified a new group of ‘sovereigns’, which they believe is growing. It is a social current that has come over from the United States and does not recognize any form of state authority. Supporters of this also made themselves heard during the lockdowns in the corona crisis. Education lawyer Carolien de Bruin recently said in research program Argos that children from this group stay at home without the government having any insight into this. “It is increasing,” says De Bruin.

Self confidence

Jessica Hilhorst, who knows many other ‘home educators’, explains the growth from the ‘increasing level of education of parents, which increases their self-confidence that they are capable of providing a good education’. Other parents cite the increase in scale, full classes and the emphasis on cognitive skills within regular education as motives.

Hilhorst uses the exemption that the law offers her to provide her daughters with a rich and stable environment. “I find living together with the children so much more fun and richer. You learn to interact more intensively with each other, to understand each other better and to resolve any conflicts better.” This stability of homeschooling makes her children more resilient, she says, than life in a school classroom.

Scientists who researched homeschooling wrote in 2012 that there is no evidence that children need the ‘full life’ of school to become resilient. The Amsterdam emeritus professor of Educational Sciences Sjoerd Karsten and his Tilburg colleague Paul Zoontjes wrote in 2012: “International research shows that children who have received education at home are not left behind. Home-schooled children generally have sufficient self-confidence and self-knowledge, they are socially skilled and socially involved.” In 2019 Karsten said in Fidelity: “Don’t forget: 100,000 students are bullied at school every day. A safe enclave is certainly not a school by definition. It is nicer for many children at home. (…) And they often have activities separate from home, so they are not as isolated as you think.”

The yammer

Jessica Hilhorst also finds homeschooling more relaxing for parent and child. She is not only referring to “the whining” at the beginning and end of a school day, she is also concerned with learning development. “If my child does not meet certain learning objectives, this can immediately cause tension at school. Not with us. That will come later. With Sarah, for example, the penny of reading fell very late: not until she was nine. In the meantime, she can read all subtitles of films, for example. Calculations, on the other hand, went so smoothly from the start that Sarah will start next year at the level of havo/vwo mathematics 1.”

Hilhorst is not convinced by the objection of many researchers that children with learning or behavioral problems (dyslexia, autism) receive better support at school. Every parent wants the very best for their children. In homeschooling, they will always do everything they can to help them, even with those kinds of problems. Specialist help is often not necessary. And if it turns out to be necessary, then you as parents can request it yourself, right?

The question is whether the apparent growth of home education will really continue. Not everyone can afford this, if only because one of the parents can hardly work.

Jessica Hilhorst does not work and has been receiving disability benefits since she was nineteen, she says. She suffers from an illness that gives her less energy. Huub, her current partner, is an architect and ICT consultant. He can organize his own working days.

Fire letter

This creates space for two hours of home schooling for Sarah and Piene three times a week, says Hilhorst. She estimates that she teaches an average of about forty weeks a year, which adds up to a total of 240 teaching hours. That is very little compared to the annual (official) 3,500 hours that children in regular primary education spend at school, more than tenfold – so in a class context. These 3,500 hours also include non-substantive activities such as dressing and dressing children.

Those 240 lessons at home in Almere are by no means the only hours of education for her children, says Hilhorst. “There is an additional day a week, sometimes even two days, with additional, formative activities with other children.” For example, Sarah and Piene took part in a course in ‘wilding’ in the forest (recognizing birds, looking for edible plants, making fire) and ‘with group lessons in texts by Shakespeare and Harry Potter’.

I find living together with the children so much more fun and richer

Jessica Hilhorst homeschools daughters

The discussion around homeschooling is about values ​​and meaning rather than effectiveness. Admittedly, it concluded Dutch Journal for Education Law and Education Policy as early as 2002 that children who are homeschooled (‘to-children’) have an ‘ahead’ over their peers at school. But the researcher especially pointed to the incomparable populations of regular and home schooling. “To children are most likely a privileged group”, wrote researcher Henk Blok. “Their parents have more education, have a higher income and undoubtedly also feel strongly involved in the development of their children. It is therefore not clear what the better results are due to: a more favorable starting position, the home education itself, or the combination of the two circumstances.”

However, school attendance officers are not confident about the operation of home education. In March, officials from the three northern provinces sent an urgent letter to Minister Dennis Wiersma (VVD, Education), reported Argos. In it they expressed concern about the strong growth of home education in Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe. From one survey among school attendance officers in 130 municipalities, by their national association, half of these municipalities were found to live ‘always’ or ‘most of the time’.

Too little insight into what is happening at home

According to the education officers involved, the government has “too little insight into what is happening at home”. They were aware of cases of children who, after years of home schooling, reported to regular education with a major learning delay. There are also parents who do not meet their obligation to apply for an exemption from the municipality every year.

The education officers called on the minister to work on a long-standing bill from 2020 (by then education minister Arie Slob) to bind home education to more rules. This includes stronger supervision by the inspectorate, additional (pedagogical) requirements for parents and the place where education is provided.

The discussion around homeschooling is about values ​​and meaning rather than effectiveness

Wiersma responded understandingly to the concerns of the education officers and announced that he would enter into discussions with the parents and associations involved. But the chances of anything changing don’t seem great. Wiersma’s predecessors, such as education minister Sander Dekker (VVD), also announced that they wanted to increase the control of home education without this actually happening. The resistance to the homeschooling bill is enormous. During the so-called internet consultation in 2020 many concerned parents – and children – sent out decidedly dismissive responses. One (anonymous) mother wrote: “So I am one of those home teachers. What I see in myself and other home educators is an immense love for our children and a concomitant heart’s desire for our children to grow up and learn in a safe, warm environment; in a way that allows them to develop their full potential and unique talents, at their own pace.”

Several contributors pointed to foreign examples, particularly in the United States and Canada home schooling very common. Universities also recruit from this group. Stanford University in California has one special application form for on its website. Why can’t that be done in the Netherlands, entrants wondered.

Understanding officer

In Almere-Hout Hilhorst joins the critics of the bill. “This contains so many rules that it seems more intended to make homeschooling impossible,” she says. Hilhorst also has different experiences with school attendance officers than the critical one from the survey in 130 municipalities. “When I got the exemption in Baarn, my previous place of residence,” says Hilhorst, “the attendance officer showed a lot of understanding. He even gave me tips on how to handle homeschooling. And the municipality of Almere simply took over the exemption from Baarn after my move.”

Hilhorst has now sent out the exemption form for both daughters for the coming school year. She is also looking into the options for secondary education for her ten-year-old daughter Sarah. “For the time being, it will just be homeschooling again.”

Also read this article from 2020 about homeschooling (partly during the corona crisis): Homeschooling for Beginners: ‘Stop When Their Eyes Wander’

A version of this article also appeared in the June 6, 2023 issue.