Which School?

Meet t e families who sidestep the traditional bricks-and-mortar classroom.

KATIE ROBERTS talks to parents about how and why they’ve chosen to educate their children outside mainstream local and international schools in Singapore.

#1 Home-schooling

A dozen parents sit chatting in the shade on a weekday afternoon at Gardens by the Bay. Children aged from four to 13 years are racing about under the sprinklers and getting wet, riding scooters, or quietly playing Uno. The adult conversation centres around their children’s learning, what’s happened that day, and where they’re planning to go for the holidays. It’s a typical Singapore scene, and yet it’s not.

These parents are home-schooling their children, who are free from the 8am to 3pm confines of the traditional schoolyard. This particular social get-together, organised by American expat NIKOLE HORKIN under the auspices of the group she founded, Singapore Homeschooling Expats, is one of a number that support parents in their roles as teachers and educators, and provide an outlet for children to socialise and make friendships with kids on the same journey.

Nikole says that the parents, representing a broad range of nationalities and backgrounds, have chosen this form of education for many different reasons. “We’ve lived in Singapore for eight years now, and have home-schooled our 11-yearold son for the past two years,” she says. As their son was approaching upper elementary level, Nikole and her husband felt home-schooling could improve the quality of his education and the family’s quality of life, so they switched to an online curriculum. The curriculum dictates that children need to complete 180 school days a year.