While homeschooling has been very popular in developed countries, it remains unfamiliar to Vietnamese. However, the concept has been imported to Vietnam by the parents who have the chances to work and live in the countries and it has, step by step, become more popular.

Homeschooling is a new growing education tendency in many developed countries in the world. In early 2012, Australian newspapers reported that instead of going to school, more than 50,000 children in the country study at home under the management of their parents.

Especially, the majority of parents in the countries with high level education development such as the UK, France, Russia or the US, apply the homeschooling method, under which children are taught in accordance with the prepared lesson plans, while they would attend online exams to obtain certificates.

Homeschooling has been favored by many students, because they do not have to attend boring lessons and follow the rules, while they can obtain knowledge through thinking games. And especially, they can learn any times they want, when they feel most comfortable.

In Vietnam, a lot of parents, who once lived and worked overseas and have been affected by the western lifestyle, attempt to apply the western education style in educating their children.

Khanh Huyen, a parent in Hoan Kiem district in Hanoi, said her child is studying at home. A relative of hers, who lives in the US and applies homeschooling to his children, has advised her to follow the method.

“My child can stay at home and learn his lesson any times he wants, instead of going to school early in the morning, returning home late in the afternoon and then struggling with home exercises in the evening,” Huyen said.

She said she is absolutely satisfied with the child’s learning records. With a flexible timetable, the boy can attend many other training courses, such as soft skill class, which would be very useful for his future life.

Homeschooling recently has become a hot topic on most of the education forms, such as lamchame (being parents) and webtretho (babes and sucklings). The noteworthy thing is that the members of the forums are mostly the parents who are office workers and have high education level, and of course, they are ready to get adapted to new methods.

A parent with the nickname “Nature Kids” wrote on the forum that her child and some other kids gather in a group of students who study at home. A young teacher has been invited to give tutoring to the students. In general, the kids teach themselves, while the teacher only designs lesson plans and give answers to students’ questions.

The students also have to experience tests, which would be sent to a school in the US for marking and granting certificates.

“I have decided to let my child to follow homeschooling. The boy has got eager with the learning, the thing that I could not see previously, when he still went to school,” he said.

“After finishing lesson hours, my child can play with the children in the same residential quarter,” he added.

Nevertheless, many Vietnamese parents still keep hesitant to apply the new education method, fearing that the method, though being recognized as a growing tendency in developed countries, would not be suitable in the Vietnamese conditions.

A parent said he is afraid that kids would not have the chances to communicate with others and get adapted to the social conditions. If so, they would not have the skills of cooperating with others and working in teams.

Meanwhile, Thanh Mai, a parent in Thanh Xuan district in Hanoi, has warned that homeschooling would bring challenges, because Vietnamese companies only accept the education certificates to the students following the standard training programmes set up by the Ministry of Education and Training.