Covid 19 coronavirus: Record jump in home-school enrolments
17 Dec, 2020 08:07 PM
3 minutes to read
RNZ
By John Gerritsen, of RNZ
The Covid-19 pandemic has driven the biggest-ever increase in home-schooling enrolments, with 619 more children learning from home in July this year than at the same time last year.
The jump to a total of 7192 children followed several years in which home education has been rising by about 200 per annum.
But home educators told RNZ they had expected a much bigger jump following the national lockdown, which forced 800,000 schoolchildren to learn from home.
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Auckland Home Educators group director Adrian Koit said he thought the lockdown would prompt a lot more people to start educating their children at home.
Children being homeschooled under the Covid-19 alert level 4 lockdown.
Photo: RNZ / Eden Fusituá
The jump to a total of 7192 children followed several years in which home education has been rising by about 200 per annum.
But home educators told RNZ they had expected a much bigger jump following the national lockdown, which forced 800,000 school children to learn from home.
Auckland Home Educators group director Adrian Koit said he thought the lockdown would prompt a lot more people to start educating their children at home. I was quite surprised because we were expecting a tsunami of enquiries coming through and a tsunami of people wanting to find out more about home-schooling, but we didn t actually, Koit said.