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If you are considering homeschooling, have just started and are feeling overwhelmed, or have been at it a while and hit something unexpected, this episode is about finding support and navigating the questions and challenges that may arise.

Most families come to Euka for the thing that sits at the centre of homeschooling: the curriculum. As Australia's largest online K-12 homeschooling provider, we cover the full range of grades, and our team is where families bring their questions about lessons, progression, reporting and getting registered.

Alongside that sits a different kind of help. The Home Education Association is an independent, volunteer-run member body offering advocacy with state authorities, local community connections, member resources and work experience insurance. Many Euka families are also HEA members.

This episode covers both. How to choose between a structured program and building your own, and what to do if your school resists letting your child go. It also covers how children rebuild their confidence socially, which is often what brings experienced families looking for answers.

Ellen Brown talks it through with Tina Smith, who homeschooled six of her own children and now helps other families through the same problems as Treasurer of the Home Education Association. Her sixth child is now at university.

Meet Tina Smith

Tina is Treasurer of the Home Education Association, a volunteer-run member organisation that supports homeschooling families across Australia.

She is answering from both sides. She has been the parent working it out across six children, and through HEA she has helped other families through the same problems: getting a family registered, working through the options with a parent who had been told homeschooling was her only remaining choice, and helping a family rebuild their child's social confidence after they left school.

In the full episode, she gets specific about the practical parts. Which office to contact when a school will not release your child, what a structured program is genuinely good for, and the work experience insurance most families do not know is available.

Key Points

Key discussion points:

• Tina recommends Euka to families who want structure. Asked what she tells a family looking for a structured program, her answer is direct: go to Euka.
• Schools vary. Some actively recommend homeschooling. Others resist releasing a child at all.
• If a school resists, you have another avenue. State education departments and their home education units have become more open to helping families register.
• A structured program does a specific job. It is often what families use while a child settles; it is also helpful if you're considering putting your child back into mainstream school down the line.
• Bullying is often a symptom. Underneath it, there is frequently a diagnosis or an unmet need the school setting could not accommodate.
• Social confidence can be rebuilt. Interest-based groups place a child among people who have chosen to be there, across a range of ages.
• Work experience insurance starts earlier than most families expect. Insurance is usually a key obstacle, and HEA covers members from age 12.

Where families can find homeschooling support

The questions Tina hears open in much the same way. Where do I find information? How do I start? I am overwhelmed because there is so much out there.

And underneath them, the one that carries the most weight: I am a parent, and I have no idea what I am doing.

Her approach with a new family is to hand over two or three things to look at rather than sending them off to survey everything. That matters because there are no guarantees. Every child is different, every family dynamic is different, and what works well for one child may not suit yours.

Ellen's own start was much the same, with everyone she met certain their way was the right one. What she took from it is that there are many great ways to do this, and that in the end, you are the only one who will know the right fit for your child.

Tina names the comparison trap directly.

"You look at a family and go, oh, I wish I could do that. But that's not your family. So you have to work out your own rhythm, and the resources that work for you." — Tina Smith, Treasurer, Home Education Association

Finding a homeschooling community

Tina points new families towards other homeschoolers, as connecting with other families is how you start to see the breadth of what is out there, and what works and what does not.

Local support groups are the usual route in, and the Home Education Association runs homeschool community groups by area. Our guide to forming a community with other homeschoolers covers how families do it in practice.

What if the school pushes back when you withdraw your child?

Tina has seen it go both ways. She describes one family in which the school and the education department worked through the alternatives, found none viable, and told the parent directly that homeschooling was the right path.

She also sees the opposite happen. Some schools do not accept homeschooling as a legitimate option, and some see releasing a child as a matter of authority rather than a family's decision. In her experience, it can get quite heated.

Who to contact when the school says no

The school is not your only avenue. State education departments and the home education units within them have become more open to helping families who are being obstructed, and they can intervene.

As Tina puts it, it comes down to knowing who to talk to. HEA publishes state-by-state registration information, and its advocacy work is currently focused on making registration a smoother experience with each state authority.

Ellen adds the reframe worth holding onto. Choosing homeschooling is in the same category as choosing a public school, a private school, or distance education. It is a choice you are entitled to make as a parent.

If the difference between those pathways is still unclear, our episode on homeschooling versus distance education sets them side by side, and our guide to whether homeschooling is legal in Australia covers the registration requirement.

Structured program, or build your own?

Some families arrive certain they could never write their own program, and a structured one removes that worry. If that sounds familiar, our episode with a teacher trainer on what actually makes a good teacher is worth a listen, since the answer has very little to do with formal qualifications.

Tina also sees families use a structured program for another reason: to help steady a child. Time to reassess, re-ground them, and settle their emotional state. In her experience, those families often return to school afterwards, which is a legitimate outcome rather than a failure.

Asked what she tells a family in that position, her answer is direct.

"If you want to use a program that is structured, go to Euka." — Tina Smith, Treasurer, Home Education Association

The example she gives is a family who arrived from another country, were not confident with an English curriculum, and needed something structured while they moved between states for work. She recommended them to Euka. They kept using it as they changed states, and when they eventually moved back overseas, they did so knowing their children's education had been properly covered.

That continuity is the point. A complete K-12 curriculum means a family can move house, change states, or travel without the program restarting, and Ellen notes that families use it either way: some take the full program, others take a subject or two as their foundation and build the rest themselves.

Cover the base, then add your own

Tina built her own program at first. By the time her children reached the middle years, she was less confident, so she bought a program that covered the foundation skills and added her own material on top.

This option worked well for her family, as they layered in what her children were actually interested in, which, for her family, was the part that mattered most.

She is clear that this depends entirely on the child. Her children were academically inclined, and she knows families with very creative children for whom that same core-work approach did not work.

A prescribed curriculum is useful. Being able to flex it is better, because it opens up everything else: nature, museums, libraries, the internet, and the history and geography a family picks up while travelling. Ellen adds that the curriculum is the base, not everything.

Why more families are homeschooling for bullying and neurodivergence

Ellen asks about bullying, noting a significant increase in students coming in because of it. Tina confirms she is seeing the same and then adds more context.

Bullying happens for many reasons. As Tina puts it, it could be racism, health, disability, or just because you exist. Our guide to the signs your child may be struggling at school covers what this can look like before it becomes obvious.

She describes bullying as a big proportion of the calls. Still, she says an even bigger one now comes from families whose children are managing a diagnosis such as autism or ADHD. Our tips for homeschooling with ADHD go further into the practical side of this.

What those parents describe is the social side of school becoming overwhelming, in ways the setting could not accommodate.

Ellen draws out the consequences of how this gets reported. Bullying and school refusal are the labels the media reaches for, but they are frequently the visible end of something else. A child managing anxiety or autism inside a system that cannot flex will often find that school becomes very difficult.

Read that way, school refusal describes a setting that is not a good fit for that child, at that time.

Withdrawal, in Tina's account, buys back what was missing: time to stop, regroup, and learn to manage emotions and triggers in a safe place.

Two episodes cover this from the family's side. Episode 43 follows a mother who left school-based bullying behind, and Episode 45 specifically addresses school refusal. Episode 23 is one mother's account of homeschooling with dyslexia, ASD and ADHD.

How homeschooled children build social confidence

The worry that stops families here is that leaving school means leaving socialising behind. The episode answers it with a worked example.

Tina describes a family whose child was not fitting in socially at school. They withdrew, then rebuilt from what the child actually liked: art and board games. The child joined a board games group and an art class, and the parent enrolled in the art class alongside them.

That produced an environment the classroom rarely does. The child was learning alongside adults, so they practised interacting with older people. In the board games group, they were among children of different ages, so they learned to build relationships with peers of different ages.

The parent went along too, joining the art classes, which meant the child was building these skills somewhere they already felt safe.

Tina's point is that these skills travel. A child who has learned to interact with people of different ages carries that into a workplace or a course, along with the ability to recognise a trigger and step away from it.

Ellen adds the observation that reframes the whole concern.

"When you're in school, your friends are only your friends because they happen to be the same age. That's why you're in that group." — Ellen Brown

Adult life does not work that way. You find people through shared interest, and you choose them. For a child who has been struggling, being good at something in front of people who care about it can be a platform they have not had before.

Ellen also names something she saw as a teacher. In a classroom, the child who disrupts an activity is often the one with no interest in it, and the cost falls on the interested child.

More on this in our guides to homeschool socialisation and special needs homeschooling.

Other support available to homeschooling families

There is more homeschooling support out there than most families realise, including free resources. It helps to know who handles what.

Euka covers the curriculum and everything attached to it, with lots of free resources available for families: choosing a program, the lessons themselves, tracking progression, reporting, enrolment and your account. Our Help Centre answers the day-to-day questions, and the support team is there for anything it does not. If registration paperwork is the sticking point, our Registration Service prepares the learning plan and documents your state requires, ready for you to submit.

HEA is a great complementary resource: independent advocacy with state authorities, local community connections, member resources and work experience insurance. Tina notes that HEA has been working alongside Euka and other organisations to make registration a smoother experience with the state bodies.

The Home Education Association runs a free national helpline on 1300 72 99 91, weekdays 9 am to 5 pm. Callers speak with experienced homeschoolers, and the call covers registration, re-registration, and issues with the state department you are registered with. That is worth knowing about whether or not you ever join anything.

Membership adds a set of teaching and learning resources on top of that, including software and reading materials for younger children. The current list is on HEA's member benefits page.

Some of their resources will add additional value for Euka families. Ellen picks out one example on air: Story Box Library, HEA's reading resource for younger children, works well with Euka's bring-your-own-novel option, where a family swaps the term's set novel for a different book while keeping the same skills work.

One item is worth calling out because so few families know it exists. Work experience placements usually stall on insurance, since an unpaid student is not covered by an employer's policy.

Some state education departments offer their own coverage, though Tina notes that in certain states it only starts at age 14. HEA covers members from age 12, across all states, with an agreement signed by the parent and the supervising employer. Details are on their insurance page.

Ellen's point is that this opens up something school-rationed. She had one week of work experience in Grade 10. A homeschooled student who wants to try several different workplaces during their senior years can, and our episode on when to do work experience covers how to time it well.

Questions answered in this episode

Why this episode matters

This episode is for the practical questions that arrive when you're considering or starting out homeschooling: what to do when a school will not let your child go, whether to use a structured program or build your own, and how a child who struggled socially at school starts to rebuild.

The answers are specific. Which office to contact when the school digs in, what a structured program is genuinely good for, and why a board games group did more for one child's confidence than the classroom did.

It maps out how to find support and build confidence in your homeschooling decisions.

More support for getting started

If you want to go further on the questions this episode raises, these are the places to start.

The free course. Our Complete Guide to Confident Homeschooling covers registering legally in your state, choosing and structuring a curriculum, building a daily rhythm, supporting a child who learns differently, and knowing your child is progressing. It is a set of nine short video modules, hosted by Brett and Ellen, free and self-paced. Start the free course.

If you enrol with Euka. Our Registration Service prepares the learning plan and registration documents your state requires, ready for you to download and submit. It is an optional add-on for enrolled families, not a general registration service.

Reach HEA directly. The free helpline is 1300 72 99 91, weekdays 9 am to 5 pm. Membership plans are on the pricing page, and a set of free resources is available to everyone.

Related reading. Our guides to exploring your homeschooling options in Australia and when bullying makes homeschooling the right move.

Related episodes. The Ultimate Getting Started Guide, and what you need to know about registration and reporting.

Episode credits

Hosted by Ellen Brown. Featuring Tina Smith, Treasurer of the Home Education Association. Future Learners is the podcast for parents and students learning to thrive with homeschooling in Australia.

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