The kids are not alright

Dr Rebecca English, QUT School of Education

While school has returned for Australian children, there is a large and growing group who aren’t going back in 2025.

Around 45,000 Australian young people are homeschooling, sometimes called home educating. They are the fastest growing educational cohort in the country.

Queensland has had the biggest increase in homeschoolers with more than 250% growth over the last five years.

Home education is a legal alternative to going to school. Each state and territory has their own laws on how a family must register but, once they have, they are legally allowed to homeschool.

In Queensland, families must register with the Home Education Unit, a section of the education department, and produce a report every 12 months on the child’s learning. This report must show that the child has progressed over the year, focused on the child’s capacity. The family must also create a plan for the next year of homeschooling which must demonstrate how the child will experience a high-quality education.

All Queensland homeschoolers must be registered between the ages of 6.5 and 17 years of age. Once the child turns 17, they are no longer allowed to be registered and their names are removed from the homeschooling register.

There are many reasons for homeschooling but the majority who choose to homeschool never set out to homeschool. They are what are termed ‘accidental’ homeschoolers.

One of the biggest growth areas in homeschooling is the ‘school can’t’ or school refusing population.

School refusal is a term for a child who cannot go to school due to a serious anxiety or a trauma response.

This group are responsible for much of the growth in homeschooling. They tend to prefer other names to school refusal, including school distress and ‘school can’t’, because these terms reflect the child’s inability to attend not them being naughty or bad.

Last year in Queensland, many ‘school can’t’ families who were pushed into homeschooling wrote submissions to a parliamentary inquiry investigating whether to overturn decades of precedent and require homeschoolers to teach the Australian curriculum.

However, as they noted, the Australian curriculum had already failed their child, that was why they were homeschooling and suffering from school trauma.

Of the total of almost 2,000 submissions, around 680 were written by families who identified as ‘school can’t’, school trauma or school refusal in their submissions.

They shared harrowing stories of bullying which reflects work that has already been undertaken into homeschooling choice.

They also shared distressing stories of their child being refused entry to classrooms because of behaviour or learning difficulties or meltdowns because of their school trauma.

These families’ stories show how complex, intersecting needs make it difficult for some young people to learn in school.

For example, one submitter noted her child was “autistic, has sensory processing disorder and severe anxiety with a speech impediment [and] has trouble processing multiple noises at once, especially whilst trying to concentrate”.

Another said her child faced “significant challenges in traditional school settings, where rigid structures and standardised approaches do not accommodate their diverse needs”. This submitter linked her child’s experience to government data that show two thirds of homeschooling families had a child with a disability or heath issue.

These submissions showed how complex and difficult modern classrooms are, and how multiple and competing needs are creating the conditions for homeschooling to grow.

There are many ways these families can be supported so school refusal does not create the outcome of homeschooling. Once they leave, it can be difficult to get them to return to school.

Sometimes, the only way a child will return is if they are enrolled in alternative school settings where young people are able to learn at their own pace and in a way that meets their needs.

Former students who were school refusers say that it is only through dealing with the triggers that successful school return can happen.

These were supported by the findings of the submissions and the report in Queensland and a previous inquiry in New South Wales.

Without a wholesale change to classroom culture, it’s likely that the numbers of families who choose homeschooling will continue rising. Teachers and other staff in classrooms need more resources so that they can help young people before they leave school.

The issues with school refusal are complex and intersecting.

Until we address these multiple challenges, families need support with homeschooling which can be exhausting, and usually the responsibility falls to the mother who must give up full time work to help her child learn.