Maverick Valle has the freedom to learn wherever he chooses, whether it’s aboard his family’s boat or in between shifts at his part-time job.
At 18, he has just completed his final year of study and is one of many students across the country who are homeschooled.
This trend is growing, with the number of families leaving traditional schools to enrol their children in homeschool programs having doubled since 2019.
The 18-year-old, along with his father Brent, turned to homeschooling when they started working together.
Maverick explained that he felt like time was being wasted spending six hours a day at school.
“I wasn’t enjoying school very much and I thought I was wasting my time and when I found out I could be working and doing a little bit of schooling on the side, I thought it was a good idea,” Maverick said.
“Me and dad started talking about working together and we thought it was a good idea to finish Year 12 so we went through and looked at all the options we could have taken and found Euka.”
Euka is the largest online full time education providers in the country, which offers homeschooling for students from kindergarten to Year 12.
“Children have different learning speeds different learning requirements, different learning tastes so the ability for them to learn at their own their own pace… It’s really rewarding,” Euka chief executive Brett Campbell said.
Since 2019 the number of Aussie kids enrolled in home schooling has more than doubled.
In Victoria over the past 12 months, registrations spiked by more than seven percent.
Maverick has been out of regular schooling since Year 10 and already has two-years of experience working in sales and marketing for the tech company his father founded.
He earns about $30,000 a year.
Research on why parents choosing homeschooling shows the majority make the decision because of social issues like bullying.
Enrolments in homeschooling are expected to keep increasing, driven in part by the growing ability for families to travel and work remotely while educating their children.
