"Home-schooling" is a new way of education in China in recent years, also known as "home-schooling". Usually, the family is the main educational place, and parents or tutors organize educational activities. Parents give up their jobs and educate their children at home full time. Its main forms of existence are: parents are tutoring their children, relatives and friends gather their children to study together, small-scale private schools, and some miniature schools that have begun to take shape.
"Home schooling" first appeared in the United States at the end of19th century, and only appeared in China in recent years, covering all stages from kindergarten to high school. At first, because of religious belief, it was mainly produced in religious families in the United States, and later it gradually developed into a widely recognized form of education. According to statistics, during the period of 2011-2012, 3% of American students went to school at home, 76.5% higher than that of 1999. According to the latest data, about 2.2 million American students are educated at home.
At present, the two most famous cases of "homeschooling" in China are Zhang, the father of the fairy tale king Zheng He and Peking University, but no matter how effective this educational method is, it is controversial because of the special background of the two fathers.
Some people think that "home education" is illegal. The Compulsory Education Law stipulates that all children who have reached the age of six, regardless of gender, nationality or race, should attend school and receive compulsory education for a specified number of years. Parents or other guardians must make school-age children or ward enter school on time and receive compulsory education for a specified number of years. If school-age children and adolescents need to be postponed or exempted from school due to illness or special circumstances, their parents or other guardians shall apply for approval by the local people's government.
Parents or other guardians who practice "home schooling" have neither allowed their school-age children or ward to attend school on time nor obtained the approval of the local people's government, so they are suspected of breaking the law.
Another point of view is that the Compulsory Education Law stipulates that parents have the obligation to send their school-age children to school for a certain number of years of compulsory education, but parents who implement "home school education" do not intend to send their children to school, but to let their children receive education better and faster. As long as families have such educational resources and can let their children complete the courses prescribed by the state according to the requirements of the Compulsory Education Law, the way of choosing family education does not conflict with relevant laws.
Chu Zhao Hui, a researcher at China Academy of Educational Sciences, said in an interview with the media that "homeschooling is actually a very complicated matter, not a question of how I choose." He believes that "home schooling" should be open, inclusive, rational, unbiased, not mutually exclusive, not purely emotional, but also operable and detectable.