Why parents are pulling children out of school

Parents are so fed up with woke teachers and curriculum that they’re abandoning Queensland schools to protect their kids. VOTE IN OUR POLL

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Parents fed up with woke teachers and school curriculums are behind more than one in five children being homeschooled, a new survey has revealed.

An opposition to the school’s philosophy on education including “wokeism” was the third most common reason for taking children out of mainstream schools at 18 per cent, with bullying the biggest problem (23 per cent), followed by academic concerns (22 per cent).

It comes as at-home learning enrolments in Queensland 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 survey by Australia’s largest homeschool education provider, Euka revealed the top reasons Australian parents had chosen to forgo mainstream schools.

“It’s also for a range of reasons, but a consistent story I keep hearing from parents who join Euka is that they’re simply dismayed with certain things their children were being taught, and not being taught in the mainstream system,” Euka CEO Brett Campbell said.

“We can’t protect our children from everything for the rest of their lives, but homeschooling allows parents to regain control of what they’re being exposed to.

“It’s not always, or strictly about avoiding wokeism – some families want flexibility to travel, to pursue a professional sporting or musical career, or get a head start in business.”

Sitting in fourth place on the list was for special needs and individualised learning at 12.95 per cent.

Euka CEO Brett Campbell. Picture: Supplied

This week, parents with neurodivergent children told The Courier-Mail they had vital necessities for learning removed including noise cancelling headphones and fidget toys with one former homeschool graduate saying the education system “wasn’t designed for her”.

Mr Campbell said the majority of their students were from Queensland.

He described the revelation that bullying was the number one reason for home schooling as alarming but not surprising.

“It’s absolutely terrifying,” he said.

“The main thing is there seems to be a large number of teen crime and teen rebellion where consequences just don’t seem to be where they used to be.”

Mr Campbell said another contributing factor was social media.

“Children no longer aren’t just being bullied on the playground, it’s on the bus and it’s at home on their phone,” he said.

“Parents need to take responsibility too on how their kids use their mobile phones.”

Mr Campbell said there were not enough parameters around social media.

“The big take home message is that for parents by the time a child tells you about it, it’s most likely been happening for a while,” he said.

Mr Campbell said parents had a responsibility to identify and know if their child was “off”.

“Whilst a child might not say it directly, they’ll communicate it in other ways.”

Deputy Premier Cameron Dick said all schools should be safe and we trust school leaders to ensure that they remain safe.

“There are many reasons why parents might homeschool,” he said.

“As long as they’re teaching to the curriculum we’ll support home schooling, we’ve done so in the past and we’ll do so in the future.”