The decision to take children fulltime on the road, well lets say it’s a big one. To uproot children and change their current routines and familiarities is gut wrenching. You will ask yourself, am I being selfish? Am I forcing them to live my dreams and goals?
These are all the things I procrastinated over while making the decision to travel fulltime, as I am sure you will too. We had many, many discussions as a family and our children were involved in each decision-making step of the way, making them feel included in the decision-making process was extremely important to us, especially for our then four-teen year old daughter’s sake.
Once we’d have made the big decision - do we? or don’t we? - The next big hurdle was to tackle what kind of schooling we would do on the road.
We had a fourteen-year-old a four-year-old and a two-year-old to worry about and how on earth were they going to receive the education they need while we travel.
I had heard of so many methods of education for kids on the road, but which one would be right for mine.
Home-school, well let’s say the sake of my kids and my sanity, no way was I taking that on; and let me tell you I take my hat off to any parent that has the patience and the abilities to set their own programs, I seriously cheer you on.
Some schools do offer you to follow their curriculum while you are away, but this is probably suited for those only taking roughly six months away from their current schooling programme.
That leaves distance education and there are so many and they all have different rules for enrolment.
Our kids are enrolled at VSV which stands for Virtual School Victoria, we are now on our second year with Kenisha now in year ten and Anaiyah starting prep.
Both years we have had great teachers offering a helping hand when needed.
Kenisha’s transition to online learning I must say was made easier due to the year we left covid had hit Melbourne badly and most students did at least 12 months online with their current school so Kenisha new her way around the virtual classroom quite well.
To show you an example Kenisha’s classes this year consist of three classes on Monday, two classes on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday, and none on Friday this is what year 10 for her looks like. She then chooses when she wishes to complete the rest of her school week.
Anaiyah on the other hand has one Webex class with her teacher on a Monday morning for an hour and then the rest of the week is made up of Andrew and myself (Alison) starting school at 8am completing a couple of hours before getting on with our travelling day.
If you’re wondering, are they going to receive the same education as let’s say a normal school environment? My honest opinion is yes, most definitely.
Kenisha has now completed a year on the road also completing the NAPLAN for year 9 while on the road and there was only positive improvement with her being at the level or above along with all the other students completing the same year across Australia.
Overall, I think our decision to travel with our kids fulltime has been the right one for us but do make sure as a family before you set out on your travels you discuss allowing each individual time to adjust to a new life and a new routine. Some days will be great and there will be days and I assure you there will be, days that you just feel out of step and need to take a deep breath and remember the reasons you decided to go on an epic adventure.
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