e²e²Yes, some families keep their jobs and home educate. The education doesn't have to happen between 9 and 3, and you don't have to deliver all of it yourself. Other trusted adults can contribute, and you stay responsible for the whole picture.
Some families do. Home education in Ireland doesn't require one parent at home from 9 to 3, and it doesn't require you to deliver every lesson yourself. It does require that a child receives "a certain minimum education", and that you, as the registered parent, stay responsible for it.
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For home-educating families raising a 2e child: gifted and neurodivergent at once, often PDA, autistic, ADHD or AuDHD.
It isn't possible for every family, and I'm not going to pretend it is. For the families it does suit, the arrangement is rarely what people picture.
Because the picture most of us have is one adult, one child, one kitchen table, all day. If that were the only model, a second income would be the price.
The fear underneath is sharper than that. Your child can't cope with school, you can't afford to leave work, and the two facts seem to cancel each other. It's easy to close the tab at this point and not look again.
The model is worth questioning before you do. The law doesn't ask for it, and many families don't live it.
Education is compulsory in Ireland from age 6 to 16. School is one way to provide it. Parents can register with Tusla's Alternative Education Assessment and Registration Service (AEARS) under section 14 of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000 instead. I cover the detail in is school compulsory in Ireland.
The standard AEARS assesses is "a certain minimum education". That is a standard about the education, not about hours or location. The responsibility sits with you as the parent, and that doesn't mean you deliver every minute of it.
This is my reading of the law, not legal advice. Tusla's own guidance is the place to confirm current requirements before you decide.
No, and separating the two takes a lot of pressure off. A child may need an adult in the house while you work. That adult doesn't need a teaching qualification to be a good adult to be around.
Finding that person is hard. Affordable, suitable care is scarce, and a child who is struggling is often harder to place. Sometimes the answer is a grandparent, sometimes a partner on different hours, sometimes a friend or a babysitter paid by the hour. Sometimes there isn't one yet.
When there is, you can see the care and the education as two things the same adult might do at once.
More people than a school timetable suggests. Grandparents, a partner, a babysitter, a tutor, an aunt who is good at one thing. Each holds a different piece.
I think of it as a small network of trusted adults, with one parent holding the whole picture. The parent doesn't teach everything. The parent knows what is happening.
None of this requires lessons. A child who cooks dinner with their grandmother on Wednesday is working with fractions, sequencing and reading instructions. A babysitter who plays a card game for an hour is giving them number work and turn-taking. A tutor who comes on Thursday for one subject covers that subject.
They count when someone notices what happened and writes it down. A two-line note is enough: what the child did, and what they were curious about or got better at.
Take an invented example, not any real child. A grandparent bakes soda bread with a ten-year-old, weighs the flour, doubles the recipe for a neighbour and talks about why the dough rises. That is measurement, scaling, a bit of chemistry and a conversation, in one afternoon.
At a home education assessment, evidence like that is useful. I wrote more on this in how to record learning when your kid won't do worksheets.
There's no single model. These are the common ones, and each has a catch:
Not every arrangement suits every child. Choose the one that works for the child you actually have.
You can ask for changes. I'll stick to what I've checked against the Act and Citizens Information.
Parental leave is unpaid, and a request can be refused. These are rights to ask and rights to time off, not guarantees of a workable income.
Domiciliary Care Allowance is a separate case. The test in the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 is about a child's severe disability and residence, not school enrolment or income. If your child qualifies, being home educated doesn't change that. Check the current rate and rules with the Department of Social Protection before relying on it.
Then it's a different situation, and the first job is recovery. A child coming out of school distress, burnout or school refusal often needs a lot of emotional support, and often a parent close by. Independent learning, or time with someone new, may be too much for a while.
That is not a failure of the plan. It can mean working reduced hours for a period, or taking leave, or waiting before you widen the circle. Recovery has its own pace and it isn't yours to speed up.
If your child is very low, withdrawn or talking about not wanting to be here, speak to your GP or CAMHS first. This post is one parent's view, not medical advice. How to start home educating after school burnout covers what the first weeks can look like.
It is a learning log. You can invite other trusted adults to add entries, so you aren't the only person who has to write things down.
Here's how it works. You invite someone by email. You choose their relationship to your child (co-parent, grandparent, tutor, family member or other), their access (add and edit, or view only), which children they can see, and whether they see full notebooks or reports only. A tutor is confined to logging, and sees only what they wrote. Other caregivers see what you've allowed. You, as the owner of the account, keep the complete record.
I'm crap at documentation, and I know many parents are. If a system needs you to witness, remember and write up everything, it fails on the weeks you're working. A caregiver can add a note on the day, and the app matches entries to the curriculum's key skills, parent side only.
It can't provide childcare. It can't replace an income, and it can't make every family arrangement work.
What it can do is reduce the admin of coordinating education across several adults, and keep it in one record you can hand to an assessor. Everything else in this post is a decision about your family, your child and your job.
The question most working parents arrive with is "How can I possibly work and teach my child all day?" It is a reasonable question, and the answer is that you can't, and nobody is asking you to.
A different question is: what could my child's education look like if I didn't have to do everything myself?
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