Home’s where the class is for many
DISILLUSIONED with the quality of education his children were receiving, Veen Somiah opted for an alternative method — home-schooling.
The former businessman is tutoring his daughter, Erin, 12, and his adopted son, Daniel, 9, at their home in Waterkloof, Pretoria.
Somiah removed Erin and her eldest sister, Hannah, 15, from their private school in 2012 after becoming disheartened. He was paying R120 000 a year in school fees.
He is among a growing number of South African parents opting for home-schooling.
“Home-schooling allows you to see your child’s individual needs, skills and strengths and home in on that.
“The public school still has its place, but it’s not the absolute answer for education in our country,” he said.
By law, all children between the ages of seven and 15 have to attend school.
Parents opting for homeschooling must register their children with their provincial education department.
Somiah uses a teacher’s guide to teach Erin and Daniel English, Mandarin, maths and science.
Somiah said it cost him R9 000 to buy the Cambridge curriculum for Erin and Daniel.
He said Hannah was attending a Cambridge International School in Pretoria where she was completing the equivalent of Grade 11 because he felt “inadequate” teaching her some of the physical science concepts.
Census 2011 put the number of home-schooled children at just under 57 000. There were 1 400 registrations last year.
Impak, the biggest home education curriculum provider in South Africa, confirmed this week that about 8 000 pupils from Grade R to 12 had registered with it this year, including 817 who are in matric.
Brainline, another provider of materials for home-schoolers, said it had several thousand pupils on its books, including 500 who had registered for the matric exams this year.
Marike Becker of Impak said some analysts estimated the number of home-schoolers to be as high as 100 000.
Jane Mqamelo of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape said she wanted to provide her children with individual attention, which many public schools cannot do because of large class sizes.
She and her husband, Simon, removed their son, Lise, from a state school at the end of April AN unusual legal battle could have major implications for home-schooling in South Africa. A children’s court in KwaZulu-Natal has ordered a deeply religious couple to hand their three children to their grandparents following their refusal to send the eldest child to school.
The Pestalozzi Trust, an organisation that offers legal advice to families who are home-schooling their children, said this week that the court case raised great concern about the future of the system.
The trust said the case had because he was not paying enough attention to his schoolwork.
Mqamelo said her son had class from 7.30am to 1pm and followed a year of conflict between the parents and grandparents about home education.
“According to the grandparents, the parents were infringing the children’s right to education by not sending them to school. In reality, only the eldest child was liable for compulsory school attendance,” said Leendert van Oostrum, an executive officer of the trust.
He said the parents, “Biblebelieving Christians”, had said “God told them to remove their children from school”. the benefits had been enormous.
She said she loved her local primary school, “but it’s not for every child”.