Home-schooling explosion in Qld fed by bullied children

Home-schooling enrolments have reached a record high as parents desperate to protect their children abandon schools.

• Full list: Qld’s worst-behaved school students

Home-schooling enrolments have reached a record high in Queensland, as parents desperate to protect their children from bullying abandon traditional education facilities.

At-home learning enrolments have soared by 229 per cent over the past five years, spiking from 3411 in 2019 to 11,250 of the state’s 880,000 students in 2024 – the equivalent of a student missing from every third Queensland classroom.

A prep student assaulted 13 times, a year 2 boy taunted by his own teacher and classmates with names like “garbage can”, a 13-year-old girl who received death threats from kids who smashed her laptop, and a 10-year-old boy who attempted to take his life after being body shamed are among the students forced to learn at home.

A record 11,250 Queensland kids are now being homeschooled, up from 10,048 since last year, with experts revealing a driving force for many parents was the protection of their children from horrific bullying.

Brisbane mother Danielle, whose son was bullied and physically assaulted 13 times in Prep, said the experience “broke him”.

“It absolutely shattered me to be quite honest because you hand over to the school this child who is very confident, really happy, willing to learn and he’s now diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety,” she said.

“My son had concussions, soft tissue damage to his head, was kicked in the penis and nearly had a ruptured testicle, had his head slammed into the bathroom sinks in the boy’s toilets, death threats, and the school did nothing.”

Tara Goodfellow, son William Cook and their dog Rose. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Danielle said her son’s grades went from Bs to Ds and he became a “totally different child”. “I got to the point where I couldn’t keep fighting for the whole school to change, I need to make my son whole again,” she said.

Toowoomba mother Tara Goodfellow, whose son William, 9, has autism spectrum disorder level 2, described his final year of school as “a year from hell”, saying her son was “destroyed on every level”.

“Kids, because he was crying, would call him retarded,” she said.

“We had another incident where another child was humping him day in and day out, and it took the school nine weeks to stop it.”

She said the same child told her son if he didn’t believe in god, a “pedophile would get him”.

“We pulled him out at Easter this year and started home schooling.

“He was asking other kids if he could play with them and I reported it to the teacher and she said it didn’t matter, he needs to try harder.”

Ms Goodfellow said her son’s fidgets for his ASD were all taken away because they were distracting.

“It’s that in-class support that never happened and then the bullying that happened in the playground,” she said.

Parents and Citizens Queensland chief executive Scott Wiseman said Queensland had “a lot of work to do” when it came to addressing bullying.

“We are trying to be very proactive in this space, I mean there’s been millions and millions of dollars spent on anti-bullying programs over the years, so it’s about how do we do things a bit differently here,” he said.

A bruise an anonymous homeschool graduate received from bullies pushing her into a desk and chair when she was in mainstream school

Mr Wiseman said there was mass confusion with parents not understanding the signs of bullying and mental health.

“It’s also about getting parents the information and understanding about how to identify if your child is being bullied, what to say, how to support them and how to approach the school,” he said.

Mother of two Casey, who wished to keep her last name anonymous for fear of reprisals against her nine-year-old son, said she had no trust in the school system after her son was repeatedly bullied by a group of girls who were caught falsely accusing him of hurting them.

“When we saw how dysregulated, angry and depressed our eight-year-old was and you hear all these stories of children committing suicide, I just couldn’t let my son be another statistic so I took the leap, quit my job and we started home schooling,” she said.

“My son has finally put on a kilo, it’s been three years since he’s put on weight, he eats now, he never used to eat at school, he wouldn’t drink water, he wouldn’t go to the bathroom, he was terrified to go to the bathroom because these girls would follow him and say he was hurting them.”

Nanango father Heath Harrison said his daughter, 15, had to start home school at 13 after she received death threats and had her laptop smashed.

“The bullying went on for a long time … I even had a meeting with the year adviser right before I pulled her out and they said we can’t offer your daughter a safe environment but said she could do her work from office,” he said.

“I was like, why is my daughter being punished?”

Mr Harrison said his daughter began threatening to kill herself.

Mother of three Shantelle Sherrington said her daughter Phoenix couldn’t last three weeks after she began year 7.

William Cook with his pet turtle Fred. Picture: Kevin Farmer

“Basically she was targeted by a student, the student at first was name calling and that all escalated until one day she walked into my daughter’s class and threatened her with a raised fist,” she said.

“The teacher told her to go to the office and the office never got the student, about twenty minutes later, my (daughter) was asked to get something from the library and that same student was waiting and she spit on and hit my daughter.”

Ms Sherrington said she spoke to the principal and was told if her daughter needed to go anywhere, she would be escorted by a teacher and if it was lunch time, she needed to sit in “safe spots”.

“Why should my girl be the victim twice? Once by the bully and once by the school,” she said.

Brisbane mother Alice said her son, 16, had to home school at 11 when he threatened to self harm after he was repeatedly body shamed by another student, saying he “would never be the same”.

“My son never wants to ask for help but he would write messages on his desk saying help me and the teacher would scrunch them up and say you don’t need help you’re being stupid,” she said.

“He has PTSD and CPSD from school.”

A recent home school student graduate, who wished to remain anonymous, said a boy strangled her by the collar of her uniform as a six-year-old and said the bullying got worse before she began home schooling in year 8. “I feel like the school and teachers brushed a lot of stuff off, like when it came to the bullying,” she said.

Australian Psychological Society CEO Zena Burgess

The 19-year-old graduate, who has ASD, said she didn’t learn anything in mainstream school because it “isn’t designed to really necessarily help the individual”.

“I just wanted to feel like a normal student. I wanted to feel included. I wanted to feel like I mattered, you know, but, yeah, in an environment in which I felt like an ‘other’, I felt very unsupported … I honestly considered suicide, and that’s where my mum decided to pull me out to go to home school.”

QUT Lecturer in Education Dr Rebecca English says most families who choose home schooling are categorised as “accidental”, meaning “they didn’t set out to do home school, they just find this is the only option left to them”.

“We see lots of school refusals because of neurodivergence, or bullying, or just not feeling supported at school,” she said.

Australian Psychological Society CEO and Bullying Zero deputy chair Zena Burgess said the after-effects of bullying in children included severe anxiety, depression and PTSD and could last a lifetime.

“They don’t learn social skills on how to handle situations, because they’re bullied, so they withdraw, or they become anxious and depressed or confused, and they withdraw from social situations,” she said.

A Department of Education spokesman said Queensland state schools were working hard every day with their students, families and staff to make sure students were safe and engaged in their learning.