I am musing tonight about where we might live in the future. The prospect of Trump winning the election has us thinking about other places with Google offices around the world that might make a good home. Not that we are super serious but we do talk about wanting to travel and see more of the world. We often talk about either 1) taking a year or two and traveling, kind of like a sabbatical, or 2) transferring to another office and then traveling in the "nearby" area.
I was looking tonight a bit at the sunshine hours in various cities (I like the website WeatherSpark). It is sure hard to beat Colorado on sunshine and it has been amazingly lovely for Andrew to not have SAD.
Then I remembered that homeschooling is illegal in some countries and that I am not sure I want to enroll my kids in school. I know if we were just traveling through this wouldn't be an issue, but if we are living and working there I think this is a factor to consider. That said we might feel that being abroad is a great time for them to be in school since they could learn another language. I guess it would depend on how old they were and what path we follow as homeschoolers.
So info is below. It is from an Advocates for Homeschooling website, so I am curious if they are a bit biased. But I figure it gives a general picture of where could work. More research would have to be done if we were actually getting serious.
- Europe:
- Germany (Munich office): illegal
- Switzerland (Zurich office): legal but varies by canton; Zurich now requires teaching credential; wonder if not being fluent in one of their official languages (German, French, Italian) would be an issue as well
- Ireland (Dublin office): legal but seems to have onerous registration and legal actions taken when not followed
- UK (London office): legal and do not have registration requirements unless have been in school
- France (Paris office, not sure how much Eng): legal, need to notify annually, doesn't seem to be always positive with the evaluators
- Belgium (Brussels office, not sure there is very much Eng in this office): legal, likely need to have testing (varies by region of country)
- Asia/Australia:
- Japan (Tokyo office): this site I am reading says "The law is vague and the business community is supporting home schooling, so home schoolers are largely left alone."
- India (Hyderabad office, not sure how much opportunity to go here): law is to go to mandatory school, but it seems that the state has said it is not going to worry about some families who choose to homeschool
- Singapore: legal (do you know they only have 6 years of mandatory schooling, even if you aren't homeschooled!)
- Australia (Sydney office): homeschooling is legal but varies by state in how many hoops there are to go through, other people go through distance learning programs that are discussed in the same category in that you are learning at home, it appears that NSW (where Sydney is located) has the most restrictive guidelines and you have to teach the curriculum. Here is a comparison between home education and distance learning in NSW.
- Americas:
- Argentina (Buenos Aires office, not much Eng here): no legislation that prohibits
- Canada (Waterloo office): Ontario law is quite supportive of homeschooling, with no testing requirements (although one must notify), unless they become suspicious of you for some reason
It is kind of funny to think about living somewhere else and homeschooling but part of the concern is that once you are in the school system you have all the truancy and attendance issues. And if we want to be traveling around the area, or back home, this seems restrictive.
Hugs,
Jen
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