Last Updated: March 9, 2023
When deciding to go off for some long term family travel, one of the most daunting things that hit families is how the kids education and schooling is going to work. This can vary by family and country, depending on the rules and regulations that surround the education system. Being from England it was a fairly simple process for us.
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Applying for ‘Home-Schooling’ in the UK
Our kids were in a state school when we decided to take the plunge and begin ‘self-schooling’. Many people think it would be a complicated procedure to take kids out of school, but it is very straight forward. You simply have to write to the school notifying them that your children are leaving and that you wish for them to be taken off the school register. The school cannot refuse this, it is your right as parents.
If you are planning on just taking a gap year or something similar you can also ask the school to keep your child’s place, but the school is not obligated to agree to this. So if they do not and you want to return to education, then you will need to re-apply for schools when you want to return, so something to bear in mind.
Once that formality is done it’s then a case of how you want to educate them. The law is fairly broad in that respect in that it is stated ‘you must provide your children with an education appropriate for their age’. That’s obviously a little down to interpretation, but it doesn’t mean you have to follow the national curriculum or enter them into exams if you don’t want to. But, if you do, you will be responsible for financing this, as well as the rest of their education.
The local authorities my contact you checking on on your kids education, but for us, it’s never been too intrusive.
It’s worth noting that this is as it stands currently. There is a a new education bill being launched that is looking to formalise home educating more, so it’s worth having a look into this. You can find some details on the UK government website.
Once we had we had made the decisions and gone through the formalities, we became really excited about the prospect of finally being able to spend more time with our children and having a more active role in their education. And excited to teach them all the fun interesting stuff, we never had time for before because school took up a big chunk of their time.
With our new found educational freedom, we’ve added our own style to our schooling to make it our own so that it now resembles a mash up combination of various alternative schooling methods; Worldschooling, Homeschooling, Wildschooling and Unschooling.
Worldschooling
Let me begin by saying that worldschooling does not mean travelling the world whilst schooling your child. Anybody can worldschool, whether you travel the world or stay local. Worldschooling is just the practise of using the world around you as an educational tool to gain experience and knowledge from interacting with your surroundings. Travelling the world whilst doing it does obviously have some advantages and opens up some additional doors but generally, worldschooling can be used by anyone and everyone!
Whilst we’ve been travelling, there are times when there is not much down time to get out our work books and set up lesson plans and that’s usually when I would say that our style becomes solely worldschool.
For example, when we were in Tokyo and there was so much to see and do in the short time that we had there, that there was no time or want for any traditional schooling. Instead, I taught our 10 year old how to read the maps for the city’s underground so that he could navigate around the city and plan a journey himself which is a vital life skill to have.
He also embarked on a mammoth climb up Mount Fuji (3776m!) with his Dad and was involved in the packing for that trip which included first aid (including carrying oxygen and how to use it in an emergency), the correct clothes and what food and drink was needed for the whole two days. All these things are really important to learn and teach about first aid, mountain safety, symptoms and treatment of mountain sickness and nutrition to name a few. And just the climb itself taught him so much about resilience, problem solving, self confidence and how to work as a team.
For our youngest, it’s usually just about learning there are different languages, different currency, trying new foods and being exposed to different cultures by interacting with people from the places we visit. We also do a lot of walking with him – basically to prepare him for bigger walks/hikes which we like to do as often as possible.
Our History and Geography lessons come into play very often during our worldschooling, depending on where we are in the world. So for example, when we were in Cambodia, we learnt about Khmer Rouge which encompassed History, Geography, Sociology, Politics and Religion.
Another subject that comes out when we slow down is Cookery. Both of the children LOVE to cook with me, even if it’s just something simple like pancakes and I get to slip a bit of chemistry into the cooking session too explaining about the different reactions happening to the food!
Sometimes we’re fatigued from a period of fast travelling and we just don’t want to do much at all for a few days. The way we worldschool is super flexible and even if we just take the kids to swim, play some cards, read to them or let them entertain themselves and use their own imagination to be creative; it all counts.
Homeschooling
Home-schooling is a bit more structured than our other methods and generally I would describe home-schooling as following the curriculum a bit more and having a routine and a schedule from home.
As we change-up our speed of travel, we tend to have a bit more of a routine and more of a home school vibe when we slow down for a bit. So for example, we had two weeks where we were in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia in the same apartment complex the whole time so then I could properly get out all our work books, make some lesson plans and structure our days a little more around traditional school subjects e.g. Maths, English and Science then come into focus.
For us, it’s important that we loosely keep up with the core subject’s from the UK curriculum so that if our children were to decide to go back into mainstream education, they would not be at a disadvantage.
So when we dive into a home-school vibe we’re working on following the core subjects of the national curriculum a bit more closely. When following the curriculum at home, sitting down at a desk and putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard only takes 1-2 hours max compared to 6-7 hours at school and this is due to lessons being catered to the individual child on a 1:1 level. We will usually set aside 30 mins on average for each Maths and English which we tend to do daily when we have time. Science will be done from a workbook for 30 mins on average twice a week and anything else just depends on what we fancy doing eg. art and craft, cookery and reading we will do a lot of during this time.
Wildschooling
Wildschooling for us is the process of immersing our children into nature. We want them to experience a wide variety of natural settings in all different climates and weather conditions and for them to learn about the animals, insects, plants and elements in those settings. It is important for us to teach them (as well ourselves – the learning never stops!) survival skills, the threats to nature, how to be sustainable and how to preserve, respect and care for our environment. For us wildschooling and worldschooling go hand in hand because a lot of our surroundings whilst travelling involve as much nature and outdoors time as we can get.
Unschooling
Unschooling is a style of education that focuses on child led learning and following what they choose to learn, when they choose to learn and at their own pace of learning. It is a more flexible, less structured style of learning that really depends on your child and whether they are a proactive learner.
Whilst I think that our children are proactive learners in many areas, unschooling alone isn’t for us as we prefer the addition of more conventional learning to cover all bases. However, unschooling is something that I definitely encompass in our schooling journey. If there is something that our kids are really passionate about then if it’s possible at that moment, I’ll run with it.
Schooling Resources
As I’ve mentioned, I do carry some workbooks so the children are putting pen to paper and we can avoid screens as much as possible, but carrying lots of every day educational tools digitally is also necessary for us as it’s a massive space saver for this backpacking family. I have a laptop and a smart phone to carry these extras and there are many great resources that are of great use when home-schooling on the go.
The Khan Academy website and app for KS2 Maths is great because it’s free, you can pick specific areas to work through, the module blocks are nice and short to hold their attention span, there’s tutorial videos to explain each block if you’re struggling to explain it yourself. It’s also great for English too but it’s American English so not really helpful for us due to being from the U.K as there are some spelling differences etc but if you’re learning American English, this would also be a great tool.
I also love Duolingo so I will regularly teach him (whilst teaching myself) Spanish and we will discuss and work out the different words and phrases together. It’s also free to use and contains a vast amount of languages that you can learn through the app whilst competing with strangers and friends for points that are mostly given based on how much practise is done. This is a great incentive for little kids with little achievements and prizes they can win as they progress.
Outschool is another website that’s pretty cool. Whilst it’s not free, there are live video classes with a small group of children and a teacher present. Every subject and theme, you could possibly think of is there! Myself and my 10 year old sat down with an unschooling approach to these classes and discussed what his interests were and scrolled through a few classes until we came to something that worked for both of us.
On Outschool, we’ve tried and tested Hogwarts Charms Class Year 1: Acrostic “Spells” (Harry Potter) by Ms Meg – it was a Harry Potter themed poetry class and he learned a lot about how to construct different types of poems in a fun, creative way and even wrote 5 new poems during the class. Another class, we’ve tried and tested is Snakes and Other Reptiles with Live Animals! By Brian Gill – The Critter Guy. The Critter Guy has a lots of rescue animals that he brings on the video class to educate the children and they are free to ask questions and discuss with him during the class. After the class, I gave my 10 year old the task to write me a piece of work (informative, poetry, poster, fictional story etc – his choice) based on what he had learnt about these animal in the class.
An app that eldest LOVES to do and doesn’t really recognise it as ‘school’ is Prodigy. Prodigy is a Maths app in the disguise of a game and is free but you get some extra benefits if you pay a small monthly fee. In this game you’re a wizard that has to complete missions and fight mythical beasts by doing Maths and your ultimate goals is to retrieve the stolen gems that have been scattered around the world by the evil puppet master. You’ve got quests, battles, dragons and your child is learning Maths – what’s not to love?
On top of bringing workbooks, stationary, digital work stored on electronic devices we also bring as many paperback books as we can stuff into our backpacks. Myself and my eldest read a lot, both separately as well as together. We will usually take 3-4 books for us to read together and another 3-4 books for him to read on his own, giving them away or swapping them as we get through them. The books that we read together will often be a series and we will read them together often over several months or even years. I will usually read to him but he also reads to me and this is an opportunity for him to practise his fluidity of reading out loud, the pronunciation of new words and using expression in his reading.
Our toddler enjoys stories too, but as his stories are very thin and he likes to hear them repetitively, his 3-4 books take up no room at all and are kept for a longer period of time.
Pros and Cons of Schooling whilst Travelling
Something else that is really important to us when we’re travelling is our children’s social interactions and creating community where we can. So a big part of worldschooling is also making new friends! We had an amazing couchsurfing experience in Delhi, India earlier this year with a Mum and her 7 year old son. We stayed with them for a few nights and the children got to play, cook, go out together and learn about each other’s home countries! Another great way to make friends is meeting up with scouts groups around the world.
Our eldest was previously in cubs and I was a scouting leader before we left so we have reached out to a few scouting groups who are always really friendly and keen to meet worldschooling scouts.
I can’t stress the importance of making friends for our children enough. It’s something that kind of blindsided us when we first began full time travelling and it’s still very much a learning process for us. Although it is easy to make friends for a few hours at a playground or at a soft play area, because of the way we have been travelling where we might only have a couple days in a particular city, it can be difficult to form more meaningful long lasting friendships. Because of this, we plan on rethinking the way we travel in the future to prioritise our family’s need to be part of a community – both local communities as well as worldschooling/travel family communities.
Our current alternative approach to education allows us to have the freedom and flexibility to follow our children’s own interests and learning goals that we wouldn’t be able to do if our kids were still in school for 6 or 7 hours a day/5 days a week. Without the rigidity of sending our children to follow a generic curriculum and learn in a somewhat broad way in order to be able to be taught alongside 30 children in a classroom setting, worldschooling has allowed us the time and the ability to personalise their learning, taking into account their individual interests, needs and values.
Half the time, I’m not entirely sure what the hell I’m doing but we seem to get there. Day to day I learn things about myself as a teacher and the kids as learners. I have to reflect and adapt from day-to-day, my approach to teaching certain topics, based on my children’s ever-changing wants and needs.
Where to Next?