Surge in fearful parents home-schooling children
FEARFUL parents were last night warned that their children must ‘learn to live’ with Covid-19, as the number of families pulling their children out of school shot up sharply.
Psychotherapist and author Stella O’Malley has told the Irish Daily Mail that they should not be ‘operating from a place of fear’.
Her warning comes as new figures show that there has been a surge in the number of parents looking to home-school their children in the wake of the pandemic. Tusla, the child and family agency, which regulates home-schooling, received 360 applications from parents last month – compared to just 79 in August last year.
Chief executive Bernard Gloster said the increase is ‘reflective of the anxiety and the concern that many parents legitimately hold’, but he does not think all those applications will lead to homeschooled students. Home Education Network (HEN) spokeswoman Cora McCauley said the group has also seen a surge in new members and parents showing an interest.
However, child mental health expert Ms O’Malley warned against keeping children at home if they are anxious about Covid19, saying we ‘have to learn to live’ with it. She told the Mail that while home-schooling works well for some families, parents should not let anxiety around Covid-19 dictate their decisions because ‘avoidance increases anxiety’.
‘I don’t think operating from a place of fear is helpful for people with anxiety,’ she said.
‘We have to learn to live with Covid, just like lots of different dangers in life, we’re going to have to live with it. We’re now in that phase and I think it’s more helpful to learn to live with it.’
She added that the pandemic has already caused ‘huge anxiety’ amongst children.
‘Sometimes it’s coming from the children, sometimes it’s coming from the parents and sometimes it’s feeding into each other,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s very realistic and appropriate and sometime it’s overblown.’
However, Ms McCauley said that, as all families were forced into home-schooling during lockdown, some realised that it was the right fit for their family.
She also believes the pandemic has normalised home-schooling to a large degree.
‘For the rest of the families, I think they enjoyed the situation so much and the fact the parents could work from home and they could see family life – it threw open a whole new vista for how family life could be,’ she said.
‘So there are a number of families as well who are doing it for positive reasons.’ She told the Mail that there are a range of pandemic-related reasons for this rise in home-schooling requests.
‘The reason would be the increasing concern of sending their children to school,’ she said. ‘Very often, they have underlying health conditions and they just feel it’s safer – either for the children or the parents – to keep them at home and take this year to homeschool,’ she added.
Ms McCauley said many families opting to home-school have a child with addition needs that they want to cater for at home.
‘I think those children are vulnerable and for that reason a lot of those families are taking the option to stay home.’
Parents who want to homeschool their child must be assessed by Tusla. All applications are then screened, processed and assessed before families are placed on the register to educate their children from their own home. There are 1,625 children on Tusla’s homeschool register.
Home education is a constitutional right and enshrined under the Education Act 2000. Parents do not need a formal teaching qualification or curriculum, but they must ensure the child receives a minimum education, suited to the age, ability, personality and aptitude of the child.
The first step parents must take when beginning the home-schooling process is to contact Tusla about it, and complete an in-depth registration form.
Once they pass this step, an assessor will visit their home to analyse the education plan they have in mind for their children.
If their application is successful, they will be monitored on a sporadic basis.
Mr Gloster said parents will be asked about the materials they will use and the proposed lay out of their home-school day.
‘There are lots of dangers in life’ ‘Huge anxiety’ among children