Homeschooling is booming across Australia as a record number of parents take their kids out of classrooms, with many citing concerns about wokeness in schools.
An estimated 45,000 children are now being homeschooled across the country, with the largest increases seen in Queensland, where there has been growth of more than 250% over the past five years.
In Victoria, where children as young as five are now being taught about “transgenderism”, numbers grew by more than 100% during the same period. And in NSW, where teachers have been told not to use the terms “girls” and “boys”, the number of homeschoolers increased by more than 285% over the past decade.
According to the latest NSW Department of Education report on homeschooling, of those who sought registration in 2024, 20% did so for philosophical reasons, 6% for religious reasons, 22% for special learning needs, less than 1% because of bullying, 34% for another reason, and 17% did not respond.
Brett Campbell from Euka Future Learning, Australia’s largest provider of online education, addressed the philosophical reasons behind why more parents are choosing to homeschool in a recent podcast where he said he was receiving a large volume of messages from shocked and worried parents.
He said mums and dads were increasingly concerned about far-left social issues being forced on their children from an early age, and highlighted massive increases in “gender dysphoria” and woke teachers as a major concern.
“The statistics here is it relates to gender dysphoria [in the US] … this is diagnosis of youths with gender dysphoria, children aged 6 to 17 in 2017, there were 15 ,172 reported. 2018, there were 18,000. 2019, there was 21 ,000. In 2020, there were 24 ,847,” he said.
“And then we went from 24 ,847 to 2021 being 42 ,167. It’s almost 100% increase in that one year. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe that there was a plane that flew over the world and sprinkled this thing on and there’s something in the water that has made this occur.”
Mr Campbell said he believed the increases were caused by information on the internet that then ended up making its way into schools due to teachers being exposed to woke ideas on platforms such as TikTok.
“So when we look at this philosophy of education and removing someone from that system, or that environment, it’s the protection [of children] from lots of things,” he said.
“There are an increasingly alarming level of teachers who are starting to share their philosophies on life outside of teaching English and maths and science and physics. And as a kid, you’re very susceptible to what your teacher says.”
Header image: A homosexual flag hanging in a before and after school care centre for students from a Sydney primary school (supplied).
