Homeschooling in India - Introduction, Process, Practices and Legal Aspects
- What is Homeschooling in India?
- Legal, possible and allowed in India?
- Process - How it is done?
- Curriculum, Exams, Qualifications
- Homeschoolers Community Support
- How many Homeschoolers in India
What is Homeschooling in India?
Homeschooling in India or Home Education or Growing Without School is a practice wherein families make conscious choice of children's growing sans formal schools or not outsourcing children's education / learning to institutions for variety of reasons and in variety of circumstances. Such living / growing gets identified through labels like 'Homeschooling', 'Home Education', 'Open Learning', 'Self-learning', 'Unschooling', 'Natural Learning', 'Living / Growing Without School' etc
Is Homeschooling Legal, possible and allowed in India?
Homeschooling in India is not strictly regulated or monitored, and there have not been clear policies which either specifically would restrict or would definitively approve or allow various forms of homeschooling
However, home schooling is possible and thousands of families have been regularly doing and do homeschooling in India without much interference from governance in general.
More > Legal aspects, procedure requirement for homeschooling in India
The process of home schooling - How to do homeschooling in India?
In the mainstream formal schooling models, most schools follow more or less similar structure & process of having annual grade curriculum / syllabus for academic outcomes and associated textbooks / workbooks and assessments / exams and linear progression through grades with facilitation through school teachers.
'Homeschooling in India' or 'Growing / Living Without Schools' instead is practiced through a variety of homeschooling structures / methods / approaches / practices to serve different individualities, needs, aspirations, philosophy and contexts / circumstances of different families.
Related > How homeschooling is done? Practices in home schooling process
How to start home schooling in India?
Homeschool Curriculum, Home schooling Exams & Certification in Home Education in India
Indian homeschoolers seeking secondary certification (equivalent to 10th grade) predominantly choose NIOS Secondary (National Institute of Open Schooling) or Cambridge IGCSE as homeschooling exams, as these boards offer option to appear as open school or private candidate for exam as a homeschooler.
CBSE and ICSE boards do not offer such straightforward / convenient options for homeschool certification, and doing CBSE homeschooling and ICSE Homeschooling is less practical option.
CBSE, ICSE, NCERT curriculum material through can be used for learning of a homeschooler in home schooling environment.
Details about > Open School NIOS, Cambridge IGCSE Homeschooling Exams
India Homeschoolers Support Community
There exist local, India-wide & international groups of homeschoolers associated with India. These groups have been and are of help for support, networking, connections and organizing co-ops, events and gatherings.
List and links of Homeschooling Groups in India
How many homeschoolers in India are there?
There are networked / connected Indian homeschoolers families as well as those not so much connected. Policy / legal obligations and regulations on Indian homeschoolers and in Indian homeschooling environment are not very strict or strictly regulated or monitored.
Given that, it becomes challenging to estimate how many children are homeschooling in India. However, from our anecdotal observations and experience, it can be estimated that there are thousands of Indian families living and doing homeschooling in India in different cities, towns and villages through variety of homeschool practices / approaches / methods.