How can you afford to home educate?

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I’d love to home educate my child but as a single parent, I have to work as I need my income. Genuinely wondering how people afford it. I’m assuming if you’re a home-educator then you don’t work.
So can you only home educate if you have savings or a second adult who’s a high earner?educ

We home educate & currently live on my DH salary - we are not rich but we can afford to pay all the bills & save a little bit.

The only people I know who do, have a partner whose wages cover the bills. I can’t see how you could do it as a single parent.

You have to fit your whole life around it. I know several single mothers who home educate. Some are childminders, some work part time from home in other jobs, some run paid home ed classes, two have small holdings that the kids help with, that kind of thing.

People work and use childcare (either family or paid), some work jobs where they can work from home once the child is in bed or are self employed and set their own hours. There are all kinds of ways that people do it but it will depend on what suits them.

Like a PP my husband works, we aren’t rich of but we can pay our bills. We live in a cheap area, we have one car for the family, we holiday cheaply and so on.

Have a look at education otherwise.

And Facebook groups there's one called home education for all (HEFA)

You don't have to follow the school day 8.50am till 3pm and you don't have to follow the same curriculum.

I guess if you are running a home and bringing up kids on one salary, then a couple would be able to do that too, with one at home or working evenings /weekends

Every home ed family I know, all the parents work.

I childmind and home ed
I have friends who one parent works full time from home, the other is self employed quite flexibly eg hairdressing or cleaning
Some who work 3 days a week and use childcare or home ed settings
Some who do childcare swaps with other home ed families or use family childcare

home ed doesn’t need to look like school or happen in school hours, it can fit around your work hours. School is also not supposed to classed a childcare (of course it’s when most people work) but it’s strictly education provision not childcare so you could use alternative childcare for your work hours and home ed around that. Your child needs to be getting a full time education suitable for their age, ability and aptitude but you and your child can choose what that looks like, as long as you can see your child is making progress.

We were both self employed, wfh.

if I home educate around my working hours, then what would my child be doing when I’m at work until 4pm?
Some people have said they know families where both parents work - what is the child doing whilst they’re at work? Home educating themselves?

What does your child do when you’re working?

How old is your child?
Do you work at home or elsewhere?

Children might be at childcare, with friends or family, doing GCSE revision, going to a forest school etc etc really depends on the circumstances.

I guess it depends if you have skills or are willing to retrain to become self-employed in something that works with being a single parent that can home educate. For example as someone previously said childminder, or thinking outside the box content creation e.g instagram/youtube could probably work well around home educating, I have a relative who trained as a hairdresser but only does wedding/brides hair. Taking a short course in gel nails or spray tanning etc. Or a traditional job that allows you to wfh whilst your child does online school.

Friends who home Ed work PT and send their child to childcare. The hours they are in childcare is probably about the same as a child who is attending afterschool club.

I have friends who both work but they work opposite shifts, one I guess they work weekends or are somewhat part time and one they co parent and both work creative/weird hours jobs and they have to give and take. Actually another works with her son around but she manages a few shops and her partner works in the business so the kid can just be around. I worked PT with the kids around but they were very young and it was HELL, now I don’t work but lots of the other parents at the forest school childcare we use work but it’s very flaky childcare. Some of the kids attend two settings to cover the hours needed, not cheap though.

Most HE families I know where both parents work have a set up where at least one of the two work very flexibly, part-time, and / or remotely. I know families where one parent works evenings and weekends, or does a couple of days from home while supervising the children, or does shift work while the other parent is around, or does content creation / self employed stuff presumably around gaps in family life.

Like a PP I also used to work part time myself (self employed) but as my DC got older I found I personally couldn’t work and do a good job of home educating at the same time. So I’m now a SAHM.

I don't home-educate but I'm quite interested in different modes of education. I know there are some home education approaches where the child teaches himself / herself from books (!) and the parent acts more as a manager rather than as a teacher (for an extreme example which I don't recommend see the "Robinson curriculum" in the US). However, I imagine your children would have to be fairly intelligent, very motivated and able to work independently to succeed with that.

Perhaps online schooling would be a better option. That follows a timetable so the parent only has to check that their child attends and does the homework, pretty much like normal school.

I've not heard of a method where children teach themselves from books, but naturally most home educating parents have a role of facilitator rather than teacher in the school way.