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What is Worldschooling?

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Have you heard about worldschooling (AKA world schooling)? All the cool parents are doing it, it’s the latest buzz word in alternative education. Is it simply taking your kids on holiday to learn about other countries?

In this post we try to answer that question, what is worldschooling? We did it for 6 years, during full-time long term travel. It’s a type of education we know well, and it works.

Worldschooling can be a lifestyle and a whole-life commitment. Can worldschooling be something you do on weekends or school holidays? Is there a timetable and a curriculum?

You can do it all-day, every-day. It is life. Worldschooling is a lifestyle choice, a wonderful one, but one you can try for a short time. Try it and you may never go back to regular school.

worldschooling what does worldschooling involve
Worldschooling. This is what worldschooling looks like. How to worldschool, why worldschool, worldschooling outcomes and exams. It’s all in this post and on our site. We were full-time worldschoolers for many years and will be again as soon as borders open. Watch our worldschooling video, below.

The best online learning program we used when our kids were young was Reading Eggs. If you register via our link (here) you can test this learning program for 30 days, for your worldschooling kids. It’s much easier to travel with than books! You can use a US, UK, or Australian version with appropriate spelling and accents.

What is Worldschooling?

Worldschooling is providing and finding education from the real world. It includes experiences, places and people from all over the globe. The more you can travel, the more destinations and the greater variety of cultures, climates, histories and societies you can explore, the more that world school education grows.

How to start world schooling Pinterest
You can pin this! Just hover and click

Worldschooling removes teachers, classrooms, schools and set curriculums, it opens doors, opportunities and possibilities.  It gives freedom in education and life.

Worldschooling is born through a love of travel and a love of learning about and from the world. There are many versions of worldschooling, some academic, some less so.

There is a thriving global worldschooling community and numbers of worldschooling families grow daily. You can join this community.

World schooling. What is worldschooling?
Worldschooling or World Schooling. What is worldschooling? How to get started? And does world schooling actually work? We can tell you that yes, it absolutely does!

Our Worldschooling Story

Back in 2012, we decided that travelling with the kids would be a great lifestyle choice for our family and a phenomenal way for the boys to get a better education. I invented a term, travelschooling.

The boys were already out of school and we were very happy with that choice, but we could see that their environment was limiting their learning.

They needed more diversity and to see, touch, do and experience it all.

Not much further down the road, I discovered that somebody had already named what we were doing as worldschooling and that it was actually a fairly commonly used term.

So travelschooling was ditched and I started embracing our worldschooling project. These days everyone is jumping on the band-wagon and I don’t like the dilution of the original idea.

Worldschoolers do not go to school, sorry, non-negotiable you can’t be a worldschooler only on weekends.

If kids go to school they are main-stream educated, nothing different there at all, how can there be?

They will be tied to a timetable, grade, and a curriculum with insufficient time to experience their surroundings and follow educational paths and projects of their own choosing.

Some worldschooling families do put their kids in school as they travel. It’s their choice and you see it more often where parents want full language immersion and for the child to become bi-lingual.

That said, every homeschooler is different, every unschooler is different, every child and family is different.

There is no one fixed right way to homeschool or worldschool and that is absolutely fine.

Education should never be one-size-fits-all and that is the massive elephant in the room with the standard education system.

Worldschooling in Vietnam at Cu Chi Tunnels
Busy worldschooling in Vietnam. Here a tour of Cu Chi tunnels, a guide with the information and a Vietnamese perspective on war history. Of course, it’s loads of fun, but you bet it’s worldschooling!

Not everyone is free to take up a digital nomadic family lifestyle but what you can do is try worldschooling.

Give it a go, take your kids on a voyage of discovery and freedom on a family gap year. Even 1 year, a taste of worldscholing, could be very good for their world outlook as you strew the world before them.

You may find you never want to put them back in school again.

Unschool, Homeschool or Worldschool?

Worldschooling can be unschooling or it can be homeschooling, it really just depends on what you want to call it.

We call it homeschooling, others may look at us and call us unschoolers. We’re certainly not unschoolers because we are not fully child-led.

Now, after many years, we do some unschooling, some homeschooling and a whole heap of worldschooling. I think a lot of homeschoolers are that way.

We can fit in with most alternative education communities.

Obviously methods of providing, facilitating and enhancing a child’s education change with need over time, age, environment and interests. Education comes is seasons.

In Australia we tend to use homeschooling as an umbrella term to cover all methodologies, in the UK they prefer to use home education, rejecting the “schooling” term altogether.

I usually stick with the term homeschooling, it’s simpler.

Worldschooling in Malaysia Temples and Religions
Worldschooling in Malaysia. Diverse religions and cultures. Here a Chinese temple clearly demonstrated how shipping and the spice trade shaped this part of the world. A truly tolerant multi-cultural society is also something to learn from.

We do our own thing, ignore the school system, and the kids get a great education. But that education has absolutely zero involvement with school.

That’s important and a whole-life commitment for however many years family and children choose that path.

We are full-time, full-life homeschoolers or worldschoolers and that education is an active process, one we put a lot of effort into.

If you’re in doubt take a look at our 1 year of homeschooling highlights to see just how much learning happens, naturally, out in the wider world.

One teacher commented that our style of learning was what schools try to reproduce in the classroom, and fail

World Schooling and Homeschooling Terms

For the uninitiated, here is a brief run-down of the usual terms in the alternative education world:

School-at-Home is doing what they do in school, at home. I don’t personally know anybody who does this. I think this is what homeschooling is taken to mean in the UK and why they prefer to call themselves home educators.

These children will probably be fitting back into the school system at some point, maybe taking the usual exams. Many people believe that home educated children are “taught” by a parent.

In reality, this rarely happens.

Unschooling is a 1970s term John Holt used, he was never happy with the term, but it stuck. He preferred the term “life”.

Unschooling involves a complete rejection of the school system and trust in the children to learn through their own interests and curiosity at whatever pace they prefer.

Unschooling is fully child-led learning.  Parents and other human beings are involved as key facilitators of that learning. You can see Hannah’s post on “What is Unschooling?” here.

Radical Unschooling takes the unschooling philosophy even further to include all aspects of life.

Sandra Dodd came up with this term and it totally rejects any distinction between educational and non-educational activities.

Radical unschooling removes limits and allows children to make their own choices in all areas of life. I’m no expert if you’d like to know more try Sandra Dodd, or Dayna Martin, prominent radical unschoolers.

Worldschooling is more difficult to define. Some class it as a type of unschooling, some children are world-schooled as they’ve been home-schooled. 

When I look back at my first year, 2 years, of being a home educator, it really wasn’t that great.

Luckily those first 2 years were before we started travelling and were highly regulated by the government.

We found our way through trial and error and were able to hit the road with confidence.

Worldschooling and World Travel With Kids

A year on the road probably isn’t long enough to find your educational groove which is one of the reasons I tell parents taking kids on a short trip to just do nothing about “school”. Don’t spoil the experience, just enjoy it and learn naturally.

The youngsters will have more time for reading, and that in itself is great for them.

To me, worldschooling is a home education approach of any sort with a good measure of travel and active learning through travel thrown in.

The partners in the process, the educational facilitator (parent) and the student have to seek out the learning in the location, it is by no means a passive absorption process.

I don’t want my kids in school, be that junior, middle or high school. I want them to learn at the source when they are ready or interested.

I want them to know that they can teach themselves just about anything because times have moved on and the internet can replace a teacher.

We parents have to facilitate education and totally shoulder the responsibility of our child’s education. It’s a big responsibility that we home-educating parents take on, and we need to be 100% committed to it.

It’s not something to mess about with.

Is it Possible to Worldschool and Not Travel?

If you take the simplest definition of worldschooling that I’ve found, then, of course, you don’t need to travel. Worldschooling is learning from the world, we are all in the world, just some of us see more of it than others.

That sounds more like a definition of unschooling than worldschooling, I think.

Eli Gerzon claims the term worldschooling as his invention. He says

“Worldschooling is when the whole world is your school, instead of school being your whole world.” 

Eli Gerzon

His definition seems to take travel out of the worldschooling scenario completely, it certainly removes school.

I guess it could work, but it would be a narrow form of worldschooling to not see the world.

What Does Worldschooling Look Like?

Wherever we worldschoolers are in the world we actively seek out the learning. It involves visiting temples, museums, markets, hotels, railway stations and playgrounds.

Worldschooling involves meeting people from every background, faith, nationality, age and race.

It involves the facilitator, doing research and having knowledge and ideas to share with the kids. We won’t have every answer, no, nor would a teacher, but we do have Google.

Finding your own information sticks better than being told and parent and child learning together is an exciting way to do things.

Worldschoolers doing written work. Curriculum
Worldschooling kids do need to be able to write and do some written maths and so on. Yes of course we do that too, sometimes. On this week we weren’t travelling, we were sitting tight in Romania through the snows of winter. So as well as learning about a unique European culture, subsistence farming, climate, meteorology, learning to ski, chop wood and build fires, positive and negative numbers and so much more, we also broke out the books. Here we were working on glaciation, following up on a visit to Scotland. Part from Mum’s head, part from YouTube, part from a GCSE UK curriculum book. This is how we roll, other worldschoolers wouldn’t do this at all.

For us, the worldschooling always starts before we reach a destination. We all, together, find out as much about our next country or region as we can before we get on the plane.

Before heading to Scotland and the UK we spent some time watching YouTube videos and finding out about, for instance, Hadrian’s Wall. If the kids didn’t know what that wall was before we got there they’d probably be totally disinterested.

Now most things we see will have some sort of “wow” factor.

After visiting we’ll try and wrap things up and find out more. The destinations always bring up more questions.

I read, I read a lot about our destinations and always have, about their history, culture, beliefs and traditions and I try to take kids to places that will introduce those ideas and spark an interest.

I work very hard at worldschooling.

The regular home education is still there too, when I first took responsibility for educating my children I was, like most new homeschooling parents, very school-at-home.

I thought that was what you had to do because I had no experience of any other way of learning.

Every day we became more and more unschool as I saw how the learning was actually happening (this is called de-schooling).

Before we left Australia I was happy to call myself an unschooler for a short period and totally embraced the term and the philosophy. We were, of course, worldschooling in our tropical home in Far North Queensland with the reef and the rainforest as a playground and classroom for all of us.

These days I rarely use the term unschooling at all.

In actual fact, I rarely use the term worldschooling. We are just getting an education. Education through adventure.

Over time, elements of school-at-home have crept back in because they needed to.

When we aren’t actively travelling we use workbooks and online learning programs. One item in our educational arsenal was the Minecraft Homeschool courses and the boys got a lot out of those as tweens.

My worldschooling teenager progressed to some Open University courses but teenaged kids become more and more self-directed as time passes by.

Kids’ audio guides, tours and talks slot into life easily on the road and becoming more important as the kids get older.

We always did some written maths and English and sometimes a science work-book as a sort of check list of topics. I also own curriculum books to remind myself and to see if my 10-year-old does actually know what he would be expected to know if he were in school in the UK.

This is, after all, a big experiment and I need to monitor the results.

If he didn’t, I would be failing him, everyone needs to know some basics.

He does, he has the same knowledge base as any child leaving a UK junior school should have. He hasn’t been taught it, he’s just picked it up.

I say should, because of course, many normally educated children won’t. Too many slip through the cracks and come out of school functionally illiterate.

These workbooks are needed reassurance for me and a sneaky way to get him writing and spelling, he enjoys science, like his mum, and writing not so much. He’s cool with it and we make it fun.

Workbooks we use include the series below, all are available online. We’ve tried many, these are our favourites. You’ll often find people suggesting that travelling kids simply keep a journal.

Nice idea, but my kids would rather extract their own eyeballs with spoons than journal, so workbooks it is. Try these, for math, science, English and more.

Buy our favourite worldschooling workbooks on Amazon here.

At the same time we’re still worldschooling, homeschooling and sometimes unschooling, we’re learning from Australia, the USA, Asia, London or wherever we happen to be.

Worldschooling kids learning from museums, zoos, historical places, diverse people, geography, lifestyles, food and cultures.

The kids made new friends and saw how local people live.  In London the boys and I went to Forest School for 2 hours per week because it was fun and a good way to experience nature while meeting new people.

We’re always learning from the world wherever we are. When we slip into slow travel mode, which is rare for us, a time usually comes when we feel we’re done and need a new environment to learn from

Worldschooling FAQ

Can worldschooled kids sit exams?

Yes, kids who have been worldschooled can indeed sit exams and gain access to higher education. There are many ways to do this. My kids (worldschooled through to 14 and 16-years-old) will be sitting iGCSE. The “i” stands for international. Independent students can also sit regular GCSEs. You will need to find an examination centre, they are all over the world, and show up tosit the exams. A levels can be sat in the same way.

Will worldschooling kids be behind or ahead of their peers?

You can only gauge “ahead” or “behind” in a school environment where all kids are learning the same things, at the same time. In this scenario we have to assume that all kids in the year are considered to be the same age. Which of course, they are not. Kids who are worldschooled generally learn a different set of things. Our experience, when our kids started highschool, was that they were among the most able students in their classes. They slotted into years 9, 10 and 11, with no difficulty whatsoever. No prior school experience was needed. The content that is included in school examinations is very limited. For instance, my son’s History exam covered just three topics, whereas in worldschooling the kids have covered a broad spectrum of world history that most schools never touch on.


Does worldschooling give greater exam success?

This is an impossible question to answer as every child is different. My own findings are that the kids had very strong background knowledge, more-so than their class-mates. They had never sat exams before, nor written an essay. They did just fine. We can never know if they would have done better or worse had they been in school for their entire childhoods. I was very happy with how well they did when they re-entered conventional school.


What’s the best age to start worldschooling?

If we consider worldschooling just in terms of accumulating knowledge, I’d say that the older the child, the more they pick up. Prior to about ten years old my children remember very little from their travels. However, the other benefits of worldschooling, such as being with their families, having freedom to play, the ability to follow their interests and, not being confined to a classroom, do, of course, apply at every age. It’s worth noting that if your child enters the school system and you decide to pull them out later they can find it hard to adjust. Kids get used to being in school.


What are the best destinations for worldschooling?

Try to provide as many diverse locations, countries, continents, cultures and climates as possible to make your worldschooling curriculum. Take your kids to places that are most different to their home environment. If your child has a particular interest, for instance in Greek mythology, art, coral reefs, wars, mountains or deserts, take them to those locations. Include activities such as skiing, scuba diving, craft classes, art tours, cooking or any location-specific or just fun activity on offer. If you’re chasing exam passes find out what topic are on the exam paper. For instance, my son studied the Vietnam war for history GCSE. His time in Vietnam was really useful.


How Do Worldschooling Parents Afford to Worldschool?

Some people worldschool for just one year, others, like us, adopt worldschooling for many years. Family gap years are normally funded through savings. Multiple year worldschooling travel requires an income. Digital nomad families, with one or both parents working online, are increasingly common. I fund our worldschooling by being a travel blogger. You can read our posts on how to sell everything and travel, how we saved $30,000, and how travel bloggers make money.


Are There Online Schools for Worldschooling Kids?

Yes and no. Online schools exist and my kids attended one during lockdown because we were not able to travel and continue worldschooling as such. There are also schools of distance education and all manner of tutors available online. We use Outschool to find classes and tutors. Can you combine online school with travel? You could, but the set timetables would restrict your freedom and your child’s learning. A child following a set curriculum probably won’t have the time to follow their real academic interests nor to read the books they want to read. They certainly won’t be out fully experiencing the destination. I know that we could not have stuck with the online school while travelling full-time. It would have been too difficult to fit around travel. There are many options in education these days, we wholeheartedly recommend a pick-and-mix approach to suit you and your child.

Update: This post was originally written a few years ago, want to skip forward to worldschooling a teenager? It’s all worked out great for my kids. How about homeschooling a 12-year-old? Maybe you’d like to know more about the homeschooling resources we use on the road, if so, click through. My kids are teens now and eventually, unexpectedly, went to school. Read why we stopped home or worldschooling here.

Find more worldschooling ideas on our worldschooling Pinterest board here.

It worked. As they get older more and more of their learning comes from their own reading and online explorations. They are happy, they read, they are technologically competent, they know more than me on many subjects and they can do maths. The elder child earns an income and passed his iGCSE exams. He’s now taking A levels online. They’re the proof that this works. They continue to be worldschooled when and where lockdown allows but now, as teens, we keep them off the internet. Their lives are their own and we respect their privacy. I’ve never wanted them to go to college or university, but that option is still there should they choose it, as it is for all homeschooled kids. Any questions about worldschooling? Or maybe you’d like to buy this book, I’m the author of the chapter on worldschooling and a homeschooling author in several others.

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dane

Thursday 15th of June 2023

I wonder if there is a group, where families meet up and travel together with their kids educating them along the way?

Is there such a thing? Our son is already home schooled but we all need something more. This would be the perfect opportunity for us all to explore our gem of a planet.

Thank you.

Dane

Alyson for World Travel Family

Friday 16th of June 2023

There are various worldschooling hubs and communities. There's one in Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, Hoi An. There are also places where people just gravitate to, like Hoi An. We even bumped into a family who recognised us in Tibet! When you're on the road you often get messages from people wanting to meet up. Just regular Facebook groups like our "Living Differently" group. Honestly, this sounds awful to me, we like our freedom. Have you taken group tours and enjoyed them? I find waiting for people, having to be "on duty" socially, not having enough time to yourself, very, very tedious, particularly with kids involved.We all have different food needs, bedtimes, getting up times, interests, stamina, fitness, and parenting styles. Not to mention beliefs politically and even in religion, you meet some very "different" people if you just hang out with other travelling families. So I'd dip your toe in the water and test it out before you commit. Even taking a day trip with other families, we've done it, hated it. They wanted to do xyz, we wanted to do something else that suited us better, honestly, we have much more fun as a family unit than having to compromise for other people. But I'm an introvert with very low social need and the kids hate being forced to be around other kids that they may not like. When you do find a family you gel with its great, but it's rare. Remember mum,dad, and the kids all have to get on and be together a lot. It's a big ask. And I'd rather talk to locals, you get more insight spending time with the local people.

Vanessa Francis

Friday 28th of April 2023

Hi! This post was fantastic and super informative. I especially liked the section Are There Online Schools for Worldschooling Kids because I am an online private math tutor. I wholeheartedly believe in what these Worldschooling families are doing and I want to be able to support them with their educational needs. Any recommendations on how I can connect with these families to see how I can help?! - Vanessa

Alyson for World Travel Family

Friday 28th of April 2023

I would suggest that you list yourself as a maths tutor on Outschool. Specify which country's educational system, so when I was looking for a maths tutor for my son I searched "GCSE" or "iGCSE" maths tutor, year 10, 11 etc. GCSEs are British, so you need to specify if you're teaching the UK, USA, Australian etc, maths curriculum. We found a wonderful lady, she goes by the name "Aunty Matherine" on Outschool, and was a great help when my son did finally, in year 10, take formal maths classes. Kids only need one year, if that, (in our experience) to learn everything then need to pass those maths exams with flying colours. If they choose to sit those exams, of course, there is no requirement to sit them for worldschooled kids or homeschooled kids and a child can sit exams as an external candidate at exam centres all over the world. But really, this system is a big money making scam. Buy into it or not, it's personal choice.

Dimitra Kurath

Monday 20th of March 2023

✨✨🌸 amazing. THabn you for showing an example of children having gone through this process and are basically adults. Pls keep updating as they get older as this is the “study research” and backup we all wait for and proof that it works to strengthen our own case

Alyson for World Travel Family

Monday 20th of March 2023

Our most recent trip was Jordan, you'll find that post if you search our site. Still more "worldschooling" for all of us.

Jessica Hori

Monday 19th of December 2022

So basically, I’ve been doing world schooling without knowing it. LOL.

I’m happy to come across this post and see what you’ve been doing and what others do. I also do a combination of all of these things.

I had that locked down stopped travel but as soon as that was over and Europe started opening up, I hoped on a plane.

In terms of online schooling, Accellus Academy or power school is cheap and self paced. There is no time table so kids can do it when they feel like, for their grade level and also work ahead at a higher grade level. That’s if kids want to have a curriculum to follow but do it at their own time, not live lectures and time tables to follow.

We also do Outschool.

We travel frequently and usually live abroad. Sometimes I am also in the states.

Registering for local school depends on the destination and sometimes I prefer that route for language immersion and socialization.

I don’t have anything against universities except that it’s bloody expensive in the USA and free (or cheap) in Europe. So I’m thinking for her to go in Europe when that time comes. She’s 12.

Of course university educated means nothing but you increasing need a bachelors or even a masters to have any sort of job in the world if you’re not doing your own business. As of yet, I have no idea what she wants to do. But she’s a phenomenal artist and I’m looking for ways to support that talent. Fashion design, product design, architecture, game design, graphic design, illustrations all could be potential professions and those can be done remotely.. at least she can have a fall back if she doesn’t go do something traditional like lawyering. 😂

Alyson for World Travel Family

Tuesday 20th of December 2022

Yeah, my job as a medical scientist (before starting my own business and earning 10 x more) required an approved degree. It was ridiculous, a trained chimp could have done it. But that's just the system now. I had fun in university, passed well, never used that knowledge again other than to pass on to my kids. I never went to lectures I just memorised it all from books. I'm a visual learner, so lectures, I don't even hear, they send me to sleep. We did sent the kids to an online school during lockdown, an accredited international school that cost a fortune. It wasn't very good. But it was something to do other than stare at the walls. My kids both decided against university which I'm very happy with. It's not free in the UK, hasn't been for a long time. I was one of the last intakes to get a grant, which didn't cover everything. You'd probably need to become a citizen or resident to use free tertiary education from another country - I guess. Never looked into it. I think places like Sweden do this. Best of luck with whatever path you choose.

Nicol Adcock

Sunday 5th of June 2022

This is brilliant. My family are considering this in the next few years. How are you finding lockdowns and travel?

Alyson for World Travel Family

Sunday 5th of June 2022

We were stuck in Australia the full 2 years Nicol, couldn't leave. So we bought a farm. My elder son is now 18, studying and working, so the "worldschooling" is officially done. It was rough, I felt like we'd had 2 years stolen, but the kids were happy enough. We'll be back on the road shortly, for shorter trips (meaning a month or so).It's taken months to get passports renewed and we still don't have them. We'll have to take it in turns being home with the animals. There are posts on our site about how they sat exams etc. And if you want to see the farm, it's here. https://tropicalfoodgarden.com/we-bought-a-farm/

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