I agree, there’s no one size fits all model of education. Full time school will be right for many, full time home education is the best fit for others.
Flexischooling is certainly a niche, hybrid education model.
Following your comment, I am curious about how many flexischooling parents teaching children themselves at home, or outsource this by paying for tutors or other programs. I will do a poll in our group to find out.
Flexischooling is rarely a 50/50 split to time between learning at home and school. In the vast majority of cases, children are learning at home 1 afternoon or 1 day per week, so the majority of the week is in school. For parents that work part time or work full time but 1 day at the week and have a day off during the week, flexischooling may be doable.
But you’re absolutely right, not everyone is in a privileged position to make flexischooling work - perhaps they are time poor, and unavailable even for 1 afternoon during school hours. Perhaps the parent is struggling with their own mental health, and does not currently have the capacity for flexischooling at this time. Taking responsibility, even only part time, for educating your child can be physically and mentally demanding and may be a challenge for chronically ill or disabled parents, this is my situation and would not have been possible without the support of able bodied grandparents, so I am very grateful and aware of my own privileged situation, to have willing, able bodied support. Requesting flexischooling and getting it agreed can be challenging. Our group does its best to make the process easier, but parents still need to do extensive research, write a formal request letter (with a template as a guide) and then convince a headteacher that they have the capacity to teach their own child. For some parents all of that feels completely overwhelming and terrifying, and that’s before parents even begin. Even getting flexischooling agreed requires certain things from parents - determination, courage, the ability to research and present themselves, confidence. Whilst becoming a parent helped me find many of these traits that I never had before, it can be very difficult to find these in yourself if you are living in fear, such as a domestic abuse situation.
in terms of the financial burden, there may well be additional costs relating to flexischooling that may be difficult, but it is not at all necessary to pay others to educate your child. Of course, it depends on the age of the child and academic level, but if a parent has the capacity - if we are expecting a child to learn something, why can an adult not also learn the same, in order to teach their child? Many home educating families follow their child’s interests, and when those interests are something the parent knows nothing about, they all learn about it together. There is a saying: the best way to learn is to teach. So in order to teach their child, parents are learning too.
There are certainly ways to reduce the cost of flexischooling. For example, in a conversation I recently had with one parent, she explained that her child was flexischooling in the afternoons, but her child was entitled to free school meals and the cost of feeding him lunch was very difficult. I suggested that he stays at school for the free school lunch and comes home afterwards. For full flexischooling days, she could speak to the school about whether they could provide a packed lunch, as schools can do when children go on school trips.
So yes, just like full time home education, flexischooling may not be a feasible option for all, but it is a legally possible and most parents don’t know that/have never even heard of it. We hope that by spreading the word we’re making parents aware of all the legal options, but we do understand flexischooling is not going to be the best fit for all 🙂