The Master鈥檚 students report presented the main reasons for the growth in popularity of homeschooling, the reasons for conflict between schools and parents, and the ways to resolve these conflicts. Sociology student Pronoza focused on the state of homeschooling in Russia. Homeschooling refers to cases where parents independently organize their child's educational activities and, when necessary, associate the child with a school as an external student in order to take intermediate or final exams. A basic general education can be obtained through homeschooling. There is another form for external school secondary education that is referred to as self-education.
At the beginning of the 2017-2018 academic year, 138 school children in the Novosibirsk region rejected the traditional school education program and opted for homeschooling. In the 2015-2016 academic year, about 0.058% of Russia's schoolchildren, that is, about 8,500 students, were homeschooled. Today, many online communities, and commercial and non-profit organizations support home education. In 2012, a new law on education was adopted that legalized additional formats for school education. Still, the norms for them have not been established so parents who choose homeschooling for their child are pioneers, gaining experience through trial and error. Often a child becomes a participant in an unsuccessful experiment.
According to the Unified Information System for the Operation of the Russian Federation Ministry of Education and Science, during the 2017-2018 academic year, approximately 15,000 children, or 0.11% of the total number of pupils in grades 1-9, are homeschooled. Of these, more than one-third live in Moscow and the Moscow region. In the Novosibirsk region, there are 138 students, and in Krasnoyarsk Krai, 198 school children. In addition, 21% of correspondence (distance learning) primary school students in the country study in Novosibirsk.
For her research, Pronoza interviewed 23 mothers ages 32 to 53 years old, 20 of them have a higher education, 3 - a degree. During these interviews a number of reasons for switching to homeschooling were expressed. These include:
In response to parents' negative attitudes towards schooling, teachers are often critical of out-of-school education. In addition, secondary general education institutions suffer from underfunding due to "correspondence students", which also affects the relations of parents and teachers.
Svetlana Pronoza described the various ways parents are resolving conflict situations. These include attaching a child to a private school because they tend to be more attentive to distance students, going to court to prove their right to home education, turn to a mediator for help and refuse to take intermediate exams, and trying to establish personal contacts with the school's management.
Tatyana Cherkashina, Sociology Candidate of Science, Associate Professor at the NSU General Sociology Section of the Economics Department, and scientific adviser to the Sociology section at ISSC talked about the work presented at the section,
There is very little research on homeschooling, and this form of education is beginning to spread, so Svetlana's topic is very relevant. Overall, for a student conference, all the reports this year were a very high level. About a third of the reports submitted were rejected during the selection process. This influenced the quality of presentations since only the most worthy participants were invited to the sections. If it had been possible, we would have given a dozen more diplomas.
