UAE: Why some parents opt to homeschool their children
Tara in Sharjah’s home was the reason her daughter’s first report card set her on the homeschooling path. She still homeschools all three of her children now (11, 8 and 3 years old).
"My daughter was in kindergarten, and I got a report card and that’s just not how she was," she said. ‘The second I did, I knew that she was not getting the attention she needs in school.
Tara is a teacher herself and after six months of intensive training she quit to raise her children. "I know the game," she said. ‘If they have 20 or 30 kids, no teacher has time to do everything.
She wrote the curriculum, she told me, and had it made to work for her children. "My son was a visceral learner," she said. "So basically he was somebody that had to be out there doing stuff. He learned the Math tables on the floor and wall. These were only possible because he was homeschooled".
Increasing popularity
Homeschooling is getting more popular all over the world Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of Dubai Future Foundation, says. As he wrote at the opening of the Dubai Future Forum in November 2024:
"Three million kids around the world were homeschooled before Covid. There were 3.4 million homeschoolers in the US in 2022 and a 34 per cent increase in homeschoolers in the UK to approximately 100,000.
The actual number is probably more. Out of school education will have five million students by next year. This is a reflection of an increasingly realisation that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach to learning. The emergence of the Internet, virtual classrooms and personalised curriculum means families now control when, how and what their children learn."
The same popularity has been manifested in the number of homeschoolers and their expanding community. Aminah Cooper is the CEO of Duneha network which provides homeschooling coaching in Dubai for parents.
Aminah is an American expat, the mother of five who all homeschooled and are now adults. What Duneha does, she said, "We have group functions with families involved and supported. ‘They have science fairs, book clubs, field trips every week or every other week, all this stuff.
Gill, a British expat who founded and oversees Cave Homeschooling, recently set up a scouts programme in the UAE to get the kids exposure. "It’s a really inclusive program that is for everybody," she said. ‘Parents can volunteer and kids get badges.
One day recently we did an exercise where children wrote letters to Palestinian children being counselled in Egypt. ‘A lot of them were so sweet and touching’.
The village also hosts hiking trips and litter drives so students are connected to the wild. The kids went for a walk last week in Mushrif Park.
Challenges
But no parent questioned that the homeschooling journey was not easy. Gill described teaching her 19-year-old son (now a college student) from a PowerPoint presentation. ‘He was a homeschooler and he never had to give a presentation,’ she said. "No homeschooling parent knows everything or is all honed in. We learn along the way too and this is why a homeschooling community is so important. Everyone learns from each other.”
Cave also has a mentorship program for parents considering homeschooling that will provide them with materials.
For Tara, the single biggest thing is how she’ll get her kids to school. "My daughter wants to go to culinary school," she said. ‘We already know where she is going. She’ll do her GCSEs and go off to a local cookery school.
"But my son wants to be an auto mechanic. We are Indians but I have been told that in India, if he applies to engineering college, we need to send him the transcript of all years of education. Homeschooled children cannot do that. There are some local colleges too which don’t take transcripts. So we’re not done exploring alternatives."
Future education is one of the biggest hurdles to homeschooling, Gill explained. "It is up to the parent and student which route they wish to take," she said. "For the UK syllabus, they can take their GCSEs and get into a British university. It’s not so hard for US universities, either. But it’s a little harder with campus universities. We talk to every family and help them decide which road they want to be on.
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