Social Trends in Homeschooling

In 2022, we began surveying homeschoolers about their social experiences. 

To gather the data, we posted the survey in homeschooling and parenting groups on Facebook and Reddit (both global and local groups around the world). We also collected some responses from parents on Twitter and Hacker News.  

As of October 10, 22, 877 homeschoolers have shared their social experiences.

We conducted another survey of families in school, to compare results. So far 80 parents have filled out that survey.  

We are still in the process of analyzing and drawing conclusions from this data. If you’d like to help analyze the data, distribute are survey, or translate our survey into other languages, please reach out! Or please feel free to share our surveys.

If you’re a homeschooler and would like to participate in the survey, you can do so here. 

If you’re children attend traditional school and you’d like to participate, use this link.

If you’re curious about the questions we asked, you can view our survey for homeschoolers here and our general survey for all parents here. 

We also welcome feedback on the questions we asked.

Here are our preliminary findings from this survey:

Overall, homeschoolers are satisfied with social experiences

75.1% of homeschoolers report being very satisfied (37.9%) or satisfied (37.2%) with their children’s social experiences. 

13.7% are neutral. 

9.4% are dissatisfied and 1.9% are very dissatisfied. 

Pre-pandemic homeschoolers are more satisfied

Of the homeschoolers, the most satisfied with their social experiences are homeschoolers who began homeschooling prior to the pandemic. Of this group 81% are satisfied or very satisfied.  Some families suggested that it was the pandemic, and not the fact of being a homeschooler that led to feelings of isolation 

Suburban homeschoolers are more satisfied than rural or urban homeschoolers

The most satisfied group of homeschoolers were suburban homeschoolers. 77.45% reported being very satisfied (38.21%) or satisfied (29.24%) with their children’s social lives.

73.78% of rural homeschoolers 

We were surprised to learn that of all the groups, urban homeschoolers were least satisfied with their social experiences. Still, 65.91% reported being satisfied with their children’s social experiences. This group was also just as likely to be very satisfied with their children’s social experience as urban homeschoolers (38.64%). Many more urban homeschoolers were neutral about social experiences (18.94%), compared to Suburban homeschoolers being neutral (11.53%)

It’s quite possible that the urban homeschoolers have been most impacted by the pandemic, as large cities have been on lockdown more often than urban and rural areas.

Religious homeschoolers are the most satisfied

Religious homeschoolers report being significantly more satisfied with their children’s social lives  than secular homeschoolers 83.37% of religious homeschoolers were very satisfied (46.2%) or satisfied (37.17%) 

64.62% of secular homeschoolers report being very satisfied (27.44% ) or satisfied (37.18%) It’s worth noting that only 9.64% of religious homeschoolers reported being neutral on this point, as opposed to 18.97% secular homeschoolers. Only 1.64% of religious and  2.31% of secular homeschoolers reported being very dissatisfied. 

We infer that religious homeschoolers meet often through activities at their religious organization, whereas there are fewer places for secular homeschoolers to gather. We have yet to research the social experiences of secular homeschoolers who are part of a homeschool organization or club. 

Parents of only children are only slightly less satisfied with their children’s social experiences

Having a sibling seemed to have relatively little impact on how satisfied parents were with their children’s social life. 

75.99% of parents with multiple children were satisfied with their children’s social lives compared to 69.93% of families with only children. 

Families with children in school are less satisfied than homeschoolers

Interestingly, in our survey of parents with children in school, only 51.25% reported being satisfied with their children’s social experiences, 23.75% were neutral, 22.5 were dissatisfied and 2.5% are very dissatisfied.. 

The fact that we are coming out of a pandemic impacts this survey

Many families pointed out to us that our results would be inaccurate since we are coming out of a pandemic that has profoundly impacted the experiences of homeschoolers and children in traditional school. And yet, in spite of this pandemic, families still seemed to be very satisfied.

Our own feelings about homeschooling and modular learning impact the way we interpret this data

We have been studying homeschoolers for many years and are very excited about this trend in education. We’ve observed first-hand many benefits children experience when their families can curate their social experiences, give them more time to play and learn in a diverse, interconnected community. We also recognize that not all homeschool experiences are alike and we want to learn more about what factors make it possible for children to have good social experiences when learning outside of traditional school.

We want to be transparent. We are not neutral.

That said, we are a team of educators who love learning, love research and love interpreting data. We want to uncover meaningful data can help people to make informed decisions. We are trying to bring neutrality to this process even though we have our own bias. For these reasons, we encourage you to give us your feedback to help us improve and make our research better.

For more on the social experiences of homeschoolers, please see our guide, “But What about Socialization?” Making Friends and Building Community.”

Please direct any questions about the survey, comments or offers to help to the Modulo team via our contact form as we continue to collect responses and analyze these results

And last but not least. If you’re a parent, please fill out our surveys!