More UAE families turning to homeschooling – but say it is about more than saving money

Hybrid and online learning programmes have become popular among parents with neurodivergent children in particular

Homeschooling can offer more creativity in the curriculum, advocates say. Photo: Annie Spratt / Unsplash

A growing number of families in the UAE have expressed an interest in educating their children at home, driven by a desire for flexibility and ensure support for neurodivergent learners.

While homeschooling remains a fringe form of learning in the UAE – Duneha, the Gulf's largest homeschooling association, was founded in the country in 2006 – it has increased in popularity since the Covid-19 pandemic. That has helped to reshape education across the country as more parents seek alternatives to traditional schooling.

The Learning Link, founded by British teacher Sophia Hunter about a year ago, has grown to support that demand. The tutoring service provides support for homeschooling families, expanding from a couple of clients to more than 200 families across the country.

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“Over the past 12 to 16 months, we’ve seen a huge increase in homeschooling,” Ms Hunter told The National. At first, she worked predominantly with neurodivergent children and those in need of greater support, but now her clientele is more diverse, from pupils training to be athletes or performers to those with parents who travel frequently for work.

Tutors can provide different levels of support, from a couple of hours a week or full-time tutoring.

Sue Nganga, a Kenyan mother of three and former teaching assistant in Sharjah, mostly tutors her sons herself from home, or using an online learning programme from the US. She will hire tutors if there is an area she is unsure of.

"I wouldn't say it is easy," she tells The National. "I've been continuously learning, unlearning and relearning. I would say it's about knowing your strengths and your weaknesses. It's the same as outsourcing a music teacher because I can't play piano."

No one-size-fits-all approach

The ability to create a bespoke curriculum for each child is what drew Ms Hunter to the industry, particularly as a mother of two neurodivergent children. “You can identify quickly how that child’s feeling that day and you are able to then change your lesson and incorporate different things," she said. "That was something that made me want to come out of the classroom, because I wasn’t able to be my best self with 25 children ... without the support and help I needed.”

Maryellen Fitzpatrick tutors a pupil at home. Photo: Kanessa Muluneh

Homeschooling tutor Maryellen Fitzpatrick echoed that sentiment. “Not all children learn in the same way," she said. "When you’re tutoring one to one, you can identify which is the best way for your children to learn. In a classroom setting, it’s almost impossible to do it that way.”

The flexibility allows you to be more creative with the curriculum, Ms Fitzpatrick added. She will take her pupils to the local supermarket to learn about money matters and inflation. She is currently working on a project about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which can incorporate art and reading comprehension. It is to culminate with her organising a cinema experience at her pupil’s home.

Hybrid approach

Not all parents choose a learning method that involves their child being taught fully at home. Kanessa Muluneh, a mother of two and entrepreneur who travels frequently for business, has enrolled her children in iCademy Middle East, a US-curriculum online school accredited by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai. That allows them to continue their studies at home or while travelling.

Kanessa Muluneh has enrolled her children in an online school. Photo: Mulu

“We found ourselves stuck in a situation where we couldn’t bring the kids, so we were travelling by ourselves,” she told The National. When she and her family moved from the Netherlands to Dubai recently, they wanted more flexibility to travel together. She also wanted greater control over her children’s education.

As of this term, her children attend the Knowledge Hub two days a week and work from home two days a week with Ms Fitzpatrick for 3.5 hours a day. Usually, on Fridays, Ms Muluneh and her husband take over, teaching the kids about entrepreneurship and personal finance.

“In my day and age, it was believed you had to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever to get a decent job,” Ms Muluneh said. “But, honestly, I don’t want my kids to do this. I want them to learn how to provide for themselves.”

The results have been impressive, Ms Fitzpatrick said. “The [children are] sleeping better, they feel they have more energy and they seem to be enjoying their learning much more," she added.

The success of such an approach to school is evident, said Tracy Moxley, principal and head of school at iCademy Middle East, where the student population has been increasing steadily at 15 per cent a year since opening in the UAE in 2007.

About 1,300 pupils from around the world are enrolled at the institution, with the majority living in the UAE. They all have the option to attend classes in person alongside learning coaches or work through the curriculum at home themselves, where they can be supervised by their parents or private tutors.

The Knowledge Hub at iCademy Middle East in Dubai Knowledge Village. Photo: iCademy Middle East

“It’s different to how we were educated at school, but it’s still a learning environment,” Ms Moxley told The National. “You need to judge online schools by the quality of the student performance, rather than a perspective, which could very well be outdated.”

She struggled in a traditional learning environment, dropping out of A-levels a year early before completing her education alone at a library in Birmingham, England. “I’d have absolutely loved to have had the opportunity to do something online,” she added.

Importance of inclusion

Inclusion is an important factor for families in the UAE whose choose to homeschool their children, said British neurodiversity coach Victoria McKeown, who works with clients who have chosen that route. “I see a lot of UK people moving here” because they are “very dissatisfied with the way schools are able to meet the child’s needs in the UK”, she told The National.

Ms McKeown agrees that homeschooling can be particularly beneficial for neurodivergent children, who may be on the autism spectrum or have conditions such as ADHD. “You really need to understand what the individual student’s needs are, because that’s what makes something neuro-affirming,” she added.

What that looks like will be different for each child. “For some, it might just be not physically going into a school building," she said. "For others, it might be that they have a caregiver. Often, their mother sat beside them, co-regulating, and that allows them access to the learning because their nervous system is being regulated. If you are doing something that really interests you, you will engage with it and be able to focus and learn.”

Stigma of socialisation

People often worry about a lack of socialising when it comes to homeschooling, but the perceptions are changing, said Ms Hunter. She also runs The Still and Sparkle Collective, where homeschooled children can participate in activities including MMA, boxing, yoga and art classes. “That starts about 12pm, so by then the kids are finished with their core learning and they come in, they play, they enjoy themselves and learn things they wouldn’t learn about in school," she said.

A homeschooling project with Maryellen Fitzpatrick. Photo: Maryellen Fitzpatrick

At the end of the day, what socialising looks like for each person is different, said Ms Nganga, whose children interact with others within their home community, at church and through extra-curricular activities. "It looks different for an introvert adult as it does an extrovert adult and children are the same," she said. "Having worked in a school, there are some kids who are very lonely, they don't have friends. Or there are cliques and they don't socialise outside these four friends. So, what does socialising mean, really?"

Affordability factor

Homeschooling and online learning can also be a cheaper option than traditional schooling. Some families with several children can face fees of up to Dh100,000 ($27,229) a year for each child. For iCademy Middle East, online tuition starts from Dh19,828, whereas blended in-person and online options start from Dh28,988.

While costs for tutors through The Learning Link vary greatly due to the customised nature of the platform, parents could pay between Dh350 and Dh400 an hour for a private tutor. “Although some families might prefer to pay a monthly salary to the teacher, there’s no one-size-fits-all price," Ms Hunter said. "But I think that’s a positive, because parents can say, ‘This is my budget’ and we can work out how many hours the children need from that.”

While Ms Nganga said homeschooling was cheaper, she suggested families might also invest their money differently to a parent paying school fees. "For example, my son loves the marine biology world, so one of the investments we'll do is, in every country we travel to, we will visit an aquarium," she said. "Homeschooling for me isn't about the price, but I would say it is affordable in a way that you can actually put the funds and finances into their areas of interest."

Ms Nganga has no regrets about homeschooling. She initially tested the process when her eldest son was four because he was not faring well in a traditional learning environment. "I often give them the option to go to school, but they say no," she added.