8 Amazing Benefits of Homeschool vs Public Schools
Making the switch to homeschooling comes with lots of benefits. Some of the common arguments around public school’s advantages are specialized teachers and an environment where kids can socialize with their peers and acquire important life skills as a result, but these perks aren’t exclusive to public schools. In fact, homeschooling offers additional benefits that public schools aren’t equipped to provide. What are those exactly? Why is this method arguably better than traditional public school education? Today, let’s explore 8 benefits of homeschool that public schools don’t have!
1. Your Child Receives Personalized Education
Not everyone’s cut from the same cloth. Some people have fast-paced analytical powers that allow them to excel at math, while others are more creative and come up with tear-jerking stories on a whim. These differences also apply to our areas of academic weakness. This proves to be a problem in public schools when a student is having a hard time with a specific subject and could end up falling behind a year because of a single class.
Among the benefits that homeschool children enjoy is having access to personalized education, enabling them to get the extra help they need when they struggle with a subject. Personalized education allows your child to learn at their own pace instead of having to follow a large group of students. For example, if your child takes longer to learn math equations, they won’t have to worry about falling behind in class, and if they’re great at science, you’ll be able to breeze through the curriculum without worrying about others falling behind.
2. Your Child Achieves Higher Academic Performance
You might ask yourself: is personalized education effective? The answer is yes! The Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) reports that homeschool students have a 30% higher GPA. The National Home Education Research Institute reports that, on average, homeschooled students have 15-30% higher grades than public school students.
What’s more, this study suggests that homeschool students have better chances at finishing college than public school students, with 66% homeschooled students graduating from college as opposed to 58% of public school graduates.
3. You Choose Highly-Specialized Teachers
Despite the fact that some amazing educators work within the public school system, it’s likely that your child will equally be exposed to some less than ideal teachers. I personally had some pretty unmotivated teachers in my time, and they were quite harmful to my education.
Homeschool parents receive the benefit of being able to hand-pick the teachers for each child. Usually, parents will collaborate with each other to teach their kids different subjects. This means that if you’re an engineer, you can teach a couple of kids some math while a biologist parent takes care of teaching science to your kids. Another option is to look for specialized organizations to outsource certain subjects. An excellent example of this is HSA, which offers homeschool students cost-effective Spanish courses along with school credit! Your active participation in choosing your child’s teachers allows you to rest assured that they are getting the best quality education you can provide.
4. You Enjoy Flexible Time Management
On a bad day, situations such as illness and extracurricular activities can sometimes interfere with your child’s class. When you’re homeschooling, however, you won’t have to worry about your kid falling behind on his or her classes, since the essence of homeschool is using a self-paced curriculum and you can easily catch up once the trouble ends!
5. Your Child Enjoys Healthy Emotional Development
A common concern among parents who are new to homeschooling is the potential danger of social isolation from peers. We all know that it’s important that kids talk to, engage, and play with each other for them to develop adequate social skills that will help them navigate through life. The public school system provides a wide variety of people your children can meet and get to know, so what are the benefits of homeschool in relation to social exposure?
Parents usually take their kids to extracurricular activities in public schools, have them participate in sports, or develop personal interests amongst other children. They also have support groups, field trip groups, and enroll in clubs such as the Boy Scouts and Civil Air Patrol! This is a very important aspect to keep in mind when homeschooling, and it’s integral to the effectiveness of homeschooling. This aspect is highly effective for social and emotional development! Here’s why:
To quote the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI):
“The home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development. Research measures include peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem.”
“Adults who were home educated are more politically tolerant than the public schooled in the limited research done so far.”
So it would seem that when done right, homeschooling is quite effective at raising emotionally stable adults!
6. Homeschooling Provides an Accommodating Environment
Life happens. Right now, most of us are on lockdown due to the recent COVID-19 epidemic that’s forever changing our worldview. Schools everywhere have transitioned to online classes and we’re changing our lifestyle to stay inside as much as possible. Many students, such as myself, are experiencing a negative impact on the quality of their education.
Most homeschooled students, however, have the opportunity to continue their studies with little or no change to the way they learn. Flexibility proves to be superior to the rigid aspects our school system currently has.
7. The Homeschool Experience Builds Better Citizens
According to the NHERI, adults who were homeschooled participate in local community service more often, vote and attend public meetings more frequently than the general public, have better odds of success at college, and they have an easier time internalizing values and beliefs from their parents.
Active participation in a community, as opposed to a passive one, contributes to the development of said community. Traditional schools act as an obligation where your child has no agency over their daily actions, but homeschool students learn from the beginning to self-direct their learning, identify their personal areas of motivation, and engage more purposefully within their community!
8. Your Child is Eligible for Special Scholarship Opportunities
Did you know that homeschool students have access to scholarships designed specifically for them? While most scholarships include homeschool students, it’s nice to know that there’s a handful dedicated to them only! Considering that the average homeschool student’s grades are better than the public school students’, you’ll find yourself with a recipe for success! When deciding what’s best for the future of our kids, taking scholarships into consideration is a must, for financial reasons and academic recognition alike.
Include Spanish in Your Homeschool Curriculum
Amongst the benefits of homeschool, you’ll find the opportunity to outsource the basic, texted-based language courses of the public school system. Language is best learned by having conversations with native speakers, which is what HSA specializes in. Go miles beyond “¿Dónde está la biblioteca?” by giving your child the chance to learn with one of our certified Spanish teachers! Bilingual people have better job opportunities and can earn more than monolingual people. Incorporating Spanish into your child’s life is easy, try a free class with us and your child will be speaking Spanish from day one!
Choose a Better Education Today
The benefits of homeschool present great opportunities for parents and kids everywhere. While students in traditional schools learn to memorize, homeschool students are actively learning how to learn, which is an invaluable and special skill. This kind of education fosters meaningful learning while turning boring assignments into challenges and failure into learning opportunities.
Would you like to learn more about HSA and our homeschool Spanish programs? Check these out!
- How Do HSA’s Native Spanish Teachers Teach Me Spanish?
- How to Add Spanish to Your Summer Camp Program
- Become Fluent in Spanish at a Fraction of the Cost
- The CEFR and How Homeschool Spanish Academy Uses It
- Homework: How Much is Too Much?
- The Perfect Spanish Curriculum for Your Child
- Which Do You Choose: The Middle School or High School Curriculum?
- What to Expect from a Year with Homeschool Spanish Academy
- ‘How Can I Help You?’ in Spanish and Customer Service Conversations - September 16, 2020
- Enter a Runner’s World in Spanish: Must-Run Marathons in Latin America - September 14, 2020
- ¿Cuántos o Cuántas? What’s the Amount in Spanish? - September 9, 2020
I have to homeschool my daughter,its her senior,but I don’t have much money for books,how much are the books ?
Hi Sheila, we have plenty of posts talking about textbooks! You can check them out here:
The Ultimate Resource List: Spanish for Beginners (PDFs, books, movies, etc.)
The Most Amazing Advanced Spanish Books for Adults (C1-C2)
Best Intermediate Spanish Books for Adults (B1-B2)
20+ Free Online Spanish Books for Self-Motivated Beginners
No More Boring Textbooks! Top 5 Spanish Books for Beginners