Parents are increasingly withdrawing their children from private schools as fees continue to skyrocket, with many putting their kids into homeschool.
Top private schools across the country can charge as much as R130,000 per year, and this is just for pre-school and Grade R.
Prices can reach over R350,000 per year at the nation’s top private schools by the time students reach matric.
The government schooling system also faces extreme overcrowding, teacher shortages and placement problems.
As a result, Wynand van Heerden, CEO of tutoring and homeschooling provider Edify, said that more South African parents are turning their backs on traditional schooling in favour of homeschooling each year.
“There’s no doubt about it; homeschooling is increasing in South Africa,” said Van Heerden.
“The general publicity of the South African school system has not been great, and private schools are becoming unaffordable for the vast majority of the South African population.”
He added that parents are looking for alternatives where they can get the same quality as top private schools for a fraction of the price.
“So homeschooling will continue to increase for the next ten years, I can assure you of that.”
South Africa had around 100,000 learners being homeschooled in 2017, and anecdotal evidence suggests that homeschooling in South Africa follows the international trend of 10% annual growth.
However, the 2017 data comes before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, where many children experienced the benefits of schooling despite schools being closed.
A report by the Learning Society Institute from the University of Limpopo showed that there were over 300,000 learners in homeschooling by 2023.
With around 13 million school-age learners, 2% of learners are homeschooled, which is mostly concentrated in Gauteng and the Western Cape. Edify said that these numbers are likely conservative.
Because this was based on voluntary surveys, these numbers are a conservative estimate of the growth behind the rise of homeschooling.
COO of Edify, Gemay van Heerden, added that homeschooling has become an attractive option in a fast-changing world where the national curriculum cannot keep pace with global developments and workforce shifts.
“A lot of parents feel their children can spend their time better learning things like AI,” she said. “With homeschooling, you can teach kids modern-day topics, because the world is changing fast.”
Three reasons for the switch
Wynand Van Heerden said that there are three main reasons why parents are making the shift to home education.
“First of all, we have kids with demanding sports or cultural schedules where they have to condense their school day to the shortest possible time,” he said.
“We also see a lot of kids who don’t settle or adapt to mainstream schooling.”
Homeschooling makes it easier to adjust to each child’s needs, unlike in mainstream schools, where students move through the same grade with varying learning strengths and speeds.
Moreover, parents are also making the change because they are worried about the content of the South African curriculum, especially in light of the new Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA).
The act, which was signed into law, gives the government greater control over school admissions and language policies.
Edify noted that many parents are concerned that the new legislation poses a threat to mother-tongue education and will cause increased overcrowding by making Grade R compulsory.
While many are making the switch to homeschooling, they use Edify’s extensive expertise to address the challenges of teaching a child.
“People think they can get one tutor who will sit with their grade 8 child and do maths, science, geography, English, or that the parent can do it,” Gemay van Heerden explained.
