Read the following passage about home schooling in the UK and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 23 to 30.
Full-time education in the UK is compulsory from the age of five to sixteen, but this doesn’t have to be in a school. Around 50,000 children are educated at home. This is called ‘homeschooling’.
Parents take their children out of school for different reasons, like illness and the need for special care, or because the distance to the nearest school may be too far. Some children are simply unhappy at school. Whatever the reason, they’re allowed to study at home, although inspectors regularly check how they are getting on.
Hayley and Jenny haven’t been to school for two years but they haven’t neglected their studies. Their mother worked out strict timetables for them, with hourly lessons for each day. She’s responsible for teaching them Maths, English, History and French. Their father teaches them Science and Geography. They study all the other school subjects online. ‘We have lessons with Dad in the evenings and at weekends,’ explains Hayley.
The family’s home is in a remote part of Wales. ‘The girls were fine at school but they spent so much time getting to school, they were too tired to learn, says their mother, Julia”. ‘We had a family conference and in the end we decided to try homeschooling. So far, it’s been a big success, but the girls know that if they want to go back to school at any time, we’ll let them. We follow the normal school program of lessons, and they will take all the normal school exams.’
There are disadvantages too, of course. ‘Social isolation is something I worry about,’ says Julia. They both seem happy and well-adjusted, but they haven’t really got friends who live locally. But in the summer holidays they go away on trips to summer camps, where they have no trouble mixing with people and making friends.’
According to paragraph 2, which of the following is NOT MENTION as a reason for homeschooling?
