Worldschooling our 5 children in South East Asia

Whilst in the UK, Dionne and I discussed homeschooling our children for many months as we wrestled with this in a broader conversation about pursuing our dreams and travelling as a family long term.  Our children’s education was one of the most important considerations for us if we were going to leave the UK and take on this global adventure.  After more thinking time, our instincts told us to go for it!  Knowing that we are combining it with slow global travel, made the decision easier.

In the UK, there has been a recently introduced process to follow as the government said it was making more effort to safeguard children and their educational development.  You have to give written notice to the head of school.  We gave one month and their last day coincided with the end of the school year.  The school asked us for a face to face chat.  We fully expected to be advised against our decision.  It is also worth mentioning that we had a few people in our friend and family circle also telling us it was the wrong thing to do.  Having known the school management for over 5 years, we had a frank and honest conversation. To our surprise they told us no one had ever made a request of this kind before.  What was even more surprising was that they were wholly supportive and excited with our decision.  This positive endorsement really gave us a boost to take on the responsibility of world schooling our children.  The remainder of the process said that the Head of School notifies the local authority and they would be in contact in due course.  Probably to ask us about our plans and check on the children.  Apart from one email about school places for one of our children next year, we have had no contact!  We had a funny feeling this would happen.  We were right!  Anyway, make sure you allow time for this whole process before you leave the UK.

We had lots of questions buzzing around in our heads.  How do we get ready for worldschooling our children?  Do we need to set up online subscriptions?  Bring loads of books?  What if we fail!??!  At first, Dionne and I were over thinking it and it was partly because we felt like we had a point to prove to not just ourselves, but also the wider community especially those who said it was not a good thing to do.

We actually decided to stop stressing and follow our own instincts and let things take their course naturally.  It’s not like we are damaging our children by showing them more of the world they had never seen?!  We knew that with our journey, everyday would be a learning day in some shape or form.  After that moment, we have been relaxed ever since.  We gave them a period of time to relax and unschool themselves which coincided with the summer holidays (July to Sept).  No need to add any immediate pressure on both them or ourselves.  Taking them out of a structured education system between 9am and 3pm would be a massive shock to the system.  And the parents too.  No more school runs and kids clubs!

It’s very simple.  We were overthinking it.  It literally means letting the kids be free everyday to choose when and how they learn through natural curiosity.  This would slowly help them to shake off the structured state school routine they had been part of since they were 3yrs old.

"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."

(George Bernard Shaw)

In this ‘unschooling’ period, we started to see gradual improvements to their mental/physical wellbeing, their relationships with each other and with us as parents.  We had a lot of fun.

Our 1st month in Bali felt more like a short summer holiday.  No pressure on them to do anything.  Just have fun.  They were still learning stuff everyday for being a tourist.  That’s the beauty of travel and exploration.

They have Amazon Kids Plus tablets which are designed to allow the kids to get a great balance between learning and entertainment apps as well as a neat parental controls dashboard.  In Bali, we had WiFi in the villa.  In our 2nd month, we were in Lombok where there is no WiFi in the villa.  We knew this was coming and it has proven to be interesting particularly with our teenage son who tells us he can’t survive without WiFi!  After a few days of moaning, they started to use the educational offline apps and spend more time away from the tablets.  This was a refreshing thing to see for us parents.

We have slowly introduced a daily morning routine where they cover off some reading, writing and Maths and English everyday.  It’s only an hour but 4 of our 5 children are young and we don’t want to force it onto them and make it something they don’t enjoy.  We use a mobile app called IXL on their tablets and it’s really good.  We pay £20 a month for this.  We believe that most other subjects will come with life and travel (languages, culture, history, the environment, socialising with others, etc) and that has proven to be the case so far.

Where we have felt a bit disappointed are on excursions to places of cultural interest.  Perhaps we set our expectations too high to think that the kids would show a high level of interest in things like religious temples and local villages learning about the history of a place in this way.  We hope this will change over time or it does limit where we can visit as parents. I think we will keep trying as the chances are, they are still absorbing new info, even though they don’t seem that interested.  Also with the daily morning learning time, sometimes they are not in the mood and it can become quite frustrating.  We have slowly learned that it’s not worth forcing them here as it’s counterproductive and goes against our underlying principle for homeschooling them.

The positives far outweigh the negatives.  They have enjoyed trekking, learning about the surrounding natural habitat (trees, fruits, etc), visiting villages, trying new foods, learning about tropical climate, climate change, plastic pollution and new ocean related stuff such as scuba-diving, surfing and snorkelling, marine conservation etc.  Their physical and mental health has never been better.  Their maturity when it comes to socialising has come on leaps and bounds.  Our 14yr old son Jayden was homeschooling a few years before we left the UK.  He studied his Maths and English iGCSEs and sat the exams just before we left the UK.  He passed them both!!  He has since gone on to pass his scuba diving open water qualification, he continues to put hours of practice into his guitar skills and recently he has started learning how to write music and learn the Japanese language online.  None of this has been forced onto him.  He is a natural home schooler.  He is still a teenager though who loves locking himself in his room for hours on his phone and game console! Lol

So all in all, Dionne and I are very happy with the way things have gone.  We didn’t have a magic formula for worldshooling and naturally felt apprehensive but we are glad we followed our instincts and took the plunge.  So far, we feel good about it and we hope it enables our children to become the best versions of themselves.  We are confident that our children are maturing and blossoming in ways they never could have if we had stayed in the UK and kept them in the education system.  We are not saying all kids should be homeschooled.  We are not saying that kids won’t thrive and develop in the UK school system.  We are simply saying that as parents of our children, we personally would prefer for ours to be homeschooled as we travel.