Top tips for parents working from home and providing home schooling

Many parents are grappling with the tug-of-war between working from home and home-schooling their kids next term. So we’ve spoken to the experts and come up with a series of fact boxes to get you started on the right track.

IT is the question on every parents’ lips - how to survive Term 2 while being pulled between working full-time, and undertaking the daunting task of home-schooling their children.

To ease the burden, The Courier-Mail has asked the best experts in the field how parents can pull off the impossible task of home-schooling and working at the same time as Queensland delivers the first five weeks of Term 2 remotely.

QUT home-schooling expert Rebecca English said parents needed to remember that schooling from home was completely different to the classroom with most academic learning achievable in about 2 to 3 hours paired with incidental learning through playing and games.

She said parents would have the best chance getting their kids to do school work in the morning while doing play-based learning in the afternoon.

“The school will be setting the work, you don’t have to be the teacher, you just have to remind the child to stay on task, and remind them you’ve got to work so everybody can work together,” she said.

“Set a time in the day where you think it’s okay that they play, watch TV or do something else and remind them up to that point it’s not happening [if they don’t finish schoolwork].

University of Newcastle home-schooling expert Dr David Roy said parents should create an area where learning materials are kept and organised and a place for learning with a routine or timetable of regular schoolwork to help children adjust.

Parents should make sure children have a morning, lunch and afternoon break with healthy food so they can “switch on” throughout the day, he said.

Education Minister Grace Grace said school staff will be in contact with parents to let them know what to expect and how to best support their child’s learning.

“This will not be home-schooling.

“Teachers, teacher aides and staff will be in schools working to deliver the curriculum to their students.”

Northlakes home-schooling parents Jody and John Habelsma said Queensland parents should know it’s possible to work full-time and home-school after having done so with two of their three children for two years before COVID-19.

Jody and John Habelsma have home-schooled their children for two years. From left there is Bailey, in Year 6, Tia, who is in prep and Zachary, who is in Year 1. Picture: AAP Image/Richard Gosling

John, a conveyancing lawyer, works from home while Jody, a registered nurse works across Brisbane hospitals, ensure they get schoolwork done with the kids before and after work and on the weekends with structured activities and play daily.

“We have a routine between us as parents … we have a list per week we try to achieve, so I can see he’s done maths so I won’t go over that, it’s not for the kids, it’s for us to make sure we’re on par,” she said.

“A typical morning would have time for chores, breakfast and getting ready for the day and our first session would be English, with reading and writing, sometimes the kids listen to youtube because there’s people on youtube that read books for children,” she said.

“Afternoon time is more creative, arts, physical education, or a scavenger hunt which has reading and maths in one – split the day up into two chunks.”

It comes as parents face mounting pressure of trying to keep their jobs and work remotely amid the COVID-19 pandemic which has seen workplaces and schools move online.

Shine Lawyers Head of Employment Law Samantha Mangwana said the burden placed on parents who are home-schooling while also trying to work from home was “immense and could not be underestimated”.

She said workers who find themselves in this position could benefit from having an open discussion with their employer about how to tackle the problems.

If workers were concerned with what the consequences could be, they should seek advice from a lawyer first, she said.

“There are ways to protect your position in relation to potential employment law claims for adverse action or discrimination,” she said.

Workplace Gender Equality Agency director Libby Lyons said the pandemic had meant employers now had a better understanding of what flexible work actually looks like in practice.

She said starting a conversation with employers about working flexibly should be easier conversation to have now than to just a few weeks ago.