Homeschooling could be a smart move

Lizzy Millar

• Last Updated: November 14. 2009 12:20AM UAE / November 13. 2009 8:20PM GMT

Erina, Cairan and Cait are helping their mother bake bread in the family’s kitchen in Dubai. The children have ground the wheat and measured the ingredients, and are now kneading dough while singing a nursery rhyme in unison.

When the task is done, four-year-old Cait goes to her play kitchen to make bread for her dolls. Cairan, seven, walks to the living room and listens to her mother recite another chapter from Little House in the Big Woods, a book by the famous children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And the eldest, nine-year-old Erina, continues her assignment of drawing a wheat field in her assignment book.

This isn’t recreation time. These children are hitting the books, and today’s lesson is on food and nutrition.

Clare O’Brien, a mother of three from New Zealand, is what is known as a homeschooling parent.

Armed with a curriculum from Germany, she and her husband, Brent, an oil-company employee, use every nook and cranny of their Jumeirah home to educate their children. Last year, the couple decided to exceed their housing budget to rent a large property in the upmarket district of Jumeirah Islands in Dubai.

Their four-bedroom home has a swimming pool, a large garden and an extra living room that they transformed into a classroom after moving last year to the emirate from France.

“We spend most of our time at home and need space for the children to run, make forts, and play active games in the garden or the pool, so it made sense to live in a bigger property,” Ms O’Brien, 30, says.

“After all, it’s our home and school. I don’t believe that a school is necessarily the best environment in which to educate children. We do not to use computers in lessons and we don’t have a TV set in the house, as we want to control the influence of the media on our children.”

Mrs O’Brien and her husband believe that learning should be incorporated in everyday life and are not big fans of traditional teaching methodologies.

But deciding to homeschool their children goes beyond personal belief. It’s also a matter of economics.

Between school tuition, expensive bus fees, extra-curricular activities and textbooks, sending a child to school in Abu Dhabi or Dubai can easily cost tens of thousands of dirhams per year. And tuition is on the rise, with private schools across the UAE able to increase fees by as much as 10 per cent annually, according to regulations decreed earlier this year by the Ministry of Education. The picture is even bleaker in Dubai. In essence, if a school’s quality rating reaches a certain level, as determined by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, the institution is permitted to raise its tuition by as much as 15 per cent a year – a situation many parents consider untenable.

Mrs O’Brien, her family’s budget in mind, is among a growing number of expatriates who are choosing to take pedagogical matters into their own hands.

Indeed, homeschooling has become an acceptable alternative to mainstream education in many parts of the world, including the UAE. According to a recent report from the US Department of Education, 1.1 million students are homeschooled in the US, a figure representing 2.2 per cent of the country’s total school-aged population. Meanwhile, 50,000 children in the UK are educated entirely in the confines of their homes.

Although there are no authoritative figures on how many families in the UAE have adopted this approach, it’s believed to number in the hundreds.

And the savings over traditional schooling are significant. For tuition alone, Ms O’Brien estimates the total cost of sending her three children to school would be more than Dh150,000 a year.

At Repton School in Dubai, for example, year-one pupils are charged a total of Dh44,500 for the academic year, and final-year pupils will run parents a whopping annual fee of Dh85,500.

Similarly, the British International School in Abu Dhabi sets its annual fees at Dh51,864 for years one to five, and Dh53,115 for older students.

Rather than paying these fees, the O’Briens built their own school for Dh15,000. This included the cost of a lesson table, a set of bookshelves and two blackboards, as well as reference material, musical aids and arts and crafts materials.

The family’s dining room has been converted into a classroom and features desks and chairs, a make-believe kitchen and a cupboard of art supplies. The walls of the classroom are covered with the children’s paintings and maps of various countries, all used in the daily lesson plans. The couple spends around Dh2,000 each month on books and materials for handicraft projects, though Ms O’Brien points out this expenditure has gone down as she continues to stock and equip the “school” for lessons and interactive demonstrations.

“For example, if I were to show how wool yarn is made, we’ll want to watch a sheep being shorn,” she says. “Of course, this isn’t as easy here in the UAE, but at least I’ll want to use a raw fleece to experience washing, dyeing, carding and spinning the wool into yarn. We then use this yarn to learn to knit. We even make our own knitting needles out of wood.”

Ms O’Brien also buys natural materials such as non-toxic paints, beeswax crayons and natural yarn, most of which are ordered from overseas. She purchases these items monthly, either directly from suppliers or through companies such as Better World Books and Waldorf Publishing. The rest of the family’s monthly education budget goes toward actual course materials.

Ms O’Brien uses the Steiner Waldorf education system to teach her children, a curriculum based on the child-development theories of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), an Austrian philosopher. Steiner stressed that learning should be experiential and integrated into daily life, and emphasised creativity as well as analytical skills. The German-based International Association for Waldorf Education provides support to homeschoolers around the world.

The O’Briens like the cost of the Steiner curriculum; each year they pay Dh180 a year for their youngest child, who is in kindergarten, Dh190 for the middle child, who is in class one, and Dh1,500 for their oldest child, a grade-four pupil. That’s quite a bargain compared to local tuition fees.

Steiner teaching materials arrive by post once a year and help the O’Brien’s formulate their children’s daily lessons. The younger the child, the less rigid the curriculum, hence the price difference. For example, pre-school children are primarily taught through song and arts and crafts, while older children tackle more intellectually demanding tasks such as problem-solving and logic exercises.

The O’Brien children are also taking French lessons, taught by a private tutor, who charges the couple Dh300 for three hours of lessons per week.

To be sure, access to a Steiner education is not restricted to homeschooled children – at last count there were 994 independent Waldorf Schools worldwide teaching the Steiner curriculum – but there are no such institutions in the UAE. The O’Brien children attended Waldorf institutions in New Zealand, England and Paris, and their mother says continuity for her children’s education was another reason she and her husband went down the homeschooling path.

And the O’Briens have plenty of company in the UAE; there are homeschooling support groups in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the northern emirates, as well as a group based in the Al Barsha neighbourhood of Dubai – the Acaciawood Waldorf Initiative – that specialises in the Steiner method. Acaciawood, headed by Mel Ross, a former nanny from the UK, is a cooperative of nine families who have pooled their time and money to set up a school.

Ms Ross, whose home has been turned into a classroom, regularly tutors four girls and five boys, ages four to nine. “We’re simply a community of people who want to do what we feel is best for our children,” says Ms Ross, 40. “Together we can make this happen.”

And she says teamwork is the group’s priority, which helps it adhering to a realistic budget. “The cost alone is not quantifiable, as each parent does their bit. For example, we have a stay-at-home dad who arranges outdoor activities and last week did the laundry. You cannot put a price on that.”

Last month the main Abu Dhabi homeschooling support group – known as In the Shade – celebrated its first anniversary. When it began in October 2008 eight families comprised its membership. That number has now swelled to 80 families of diverse nationalities and religions who use a variety of traditional and non-traditional methods to educate their children. The families provide support for each other and make a point of giving their children plenty of opportunity for peer interaction in monthly activities such as sport and travel. The group also maintains a blog (http://uaehomeschool.wordpress.com).

Hana, 40, an Abu Dhabi mother who preferred to not use her family name, says the biggest challenge she faces as a homeschooler is educating her six-year-old daughter while not isolating her from other children. In the Shade, she says, helps ease her concerns.

“We get together, share resources and ideas and organise field trips,” says Hana, who is from Canada and has lived in the capital since her daughter, Mia, was born. “To me, homeschooling is a lifestyle choice that brings me into contact with other like-minded parents.”

As a former teacher herself, Hana is confident that her daughter is benefiting from homeschooling and says she spends less than a Dh1,000 a month on the endeavour.
So is homeschooling a viable option for all?

The UAE Ministry of Education does not actively encourage the practice, but does support Emirati parents who homeschool, provided that they follow the UAE national curriculum.

On the other hand, education experts say that expatriates should consult their embassies to determine the rules governing mandatory education in their respective countries. There are a wide variety of homeschooling programmes, and it’s important that you choose the right one for you and your child. After all, their future depends on it.