Home-schooled students face hurdles to higher education

Reprinted with permission from U n i v e r s i t y A f f a i r s • J a n u a r y 2 0 0 2

by D'Arcy Jenish

University registrars in Ontario and a federation of parents who teach their children at home are beginning talks about how to admit home-schooled students to Ontario universities. There aren’t any formal guidelines for
dealing with home-schooled students, and universities have trouble slotting them into the system because they are such a varied group.“It’s a challenge,” says Karel Swift, registar at University of Toronto. “It’s hard to come up with a precise formula
because they’re all so different.” Now, the Ontario University Registrars Association has asked the Ontario Federation of Teaching Parents to take part in a roundtable meeting about admissions at their annual meeting in February. Ontario universities may become somewhat more willing to welcome home-schooled students because last May the Ontario Ministry of Education advised universities that qualified home-educated students are now eligible to be counted for funding purposes. Nobody knows how many Canadian children are being educated at home and even the estimates, usually compiled by
associations representing teaching parents, vary wildly. U of T has admitted about eight such students over the past four
years, Ms. Swift says, and they have generally performed very well. But they were also subjected to rigorous scrutiny before
being accepted. The university wanted to see a complete portfolio of their work and, in most cases, asked for Scholastic
Aptitude Test scores or marks from some other independent academic test. Ms. Swift adds that the Ontario
Council of University Admissions Officers have had discussions with organizations representing teaching parents but so
far they have not been able to develop a standard list of prerequisites for accepting home-schooled students. In many provinces, including Ontario, there aren’t any province-wide high school exams that home-schooled students could take.
Saskatchewan is one province that allows home-schooled students to take exams if they want to qualify for university
admission.
“We are a bit of a pain for the institutions,” admits Leo Gaumont, an Alberta high school teacher who, along
with his wife, has home-schooled their three children in Tofield, a farming community east of Edmonton. “We don’t fit
pre-conceived moulds.” The Gaumonts’ two oldest children went on to earn diplomas from the Northern Alberta
Institute of Technology in Edmonton, but he says both encountered hurdles, including skepticism about the quality of their education, before being admitted to the community college. Teaching parents in several provinces have been actively querying universities and other postsecondary institutions to determine how they handle homeschooled students. Mr. Gaumont, a past
secretary of the Alberta Home Education Association, was involved in a survey last year in which questionnaires were sent to 187 universities, university colleges and religious colleges across the country. Sixty-seven institutions responded,
and 72 per cent of them had accepted home-schooled students while the balance either had not or would not. “We
concluded that if home schoolers come knocking at their door, most will give them a chance,” says Mr. Gaumont. “But
they’re not going to go looking for them.”

The Christian Home Schoolers Association of Nova Scotia has surveyed universities and colleges in Atlantic Canada and found that none had a set admission policy, but most were open to admitting students educated at home. In most cases, the institutions wanted a portfolio of work and would insist on standardized test results only if the student had not followed a prescribed curriculum. The Ontario Federation of Teaching Parents undertook a small survey of four universities – Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier, McMaster and Brock – and found their approaches differed significantly. Brock, for instance, said it was prepared to assess students individually and would have faculty conduct an interview in the absence of supporting documents to assess achievement. McMaster, on the other hand, insisted upon an Ontario high school diploma or completion of a community college diploma, but would consider mature students. Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier have recently developed admission policies. Waterloo’s won’t be released until receiving senate approval. The WLU policy, adopted by senate in mid-November, stipulates that students educated at home can be admitted directly to the contemporary studies program at the university’s Brantford campus, and those who can provide independent evidence of academic achievement can be admitted to any WLU program. Otherwise, they can write a Scholastic Aptitude Test and other tests, or wait until they are 21 and be admitted asmature students.

Home-schooled students face hurdles to higher education by D’Arcy Jenish There are no firm estimates of the number of home-schooled students in Canada. Aff a i res universitaires • janvier 2002 35 It’s boom time for enrolment at Canadian universities, with hefty increases this past fall across all student categories, according to preliminary figures prepared by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. That growth, however, has not been matched by an increase in faculty, putting additional pressure on universities to boost faculty numbers. At the national level, full-time undergraduate enrolment grew 3.8 percent, the fourth consecutive year of increases and the largest since the early 1990s. At the graduate level, full-time enrolment grew 4.8 percent. And, for the first time in nine years, part-time undergraduate enrolment is up, increasing 2.3 percent. Part-time enrolment at the graduate level also grew, up 5.7 percent. Although not all regions report on international students, those that do indicate that their numbers have grown very significantly again this year – up more than 17 percent on average. “Clearly, the increased international recruitment efforts of many universities are having an impact,” said AUCC senior analyst Herb O’Heron. Once all the numbers are counted, full-time undergraduate enrolment for this past fall is expected to surpass 536,000, an increase of 20,000 over the 2000-01 academic year. Most provinces reported increases this year, and these were especially significant in Manitoba (5.8 percent), British Columbia (4.6 percent), and Ontario (4.5 percent). The number of part-time undergraduate is expected to reach 209,000 this academic year, still down significantly from a peak of 274,000 in 1992. Full-time graduate student numbers are predicted to top 88,000, while the number of part-time grad students should reach 46,000. While population is one of the main factors influencing enrolment, it is by no means the only factor, said Mr. O’Heron. According to population estimates for 2001, undergraduate enrolment has increased at more than four times the rate of growth in youth population cohorts (85 percent of undergraduates are under 25 years old). “It is clear that participation rates are once again rising and, in fact, are increasing more quickly than we projected when we forecast a 20-percent increase in enrolment by the end of the decade,” he said. There are many factors that influence participation rates, added Mr. O’Heron. Increased funding for enrolment growth in targeted programs, such as computer science, has allowed some universities to expand their enrolment. Growth in the number of new jobs that will require a university degree is another factor. But, universities “are not yet hiring the additional faculty needed to provide the teaching and research services these additional students need to fully benefit from their university experience”, Mr. O’Heron warned. AUCC predicts universities will need to hire 30,000 new faculty over the next 10 years due to retirement and increased enrolment. Anecdotal reports indicate that many Canadian universities are now managing to replace faculty lost through retirement and attrition, he said, but overall faculty numbers have not shown any appreciable increase. On the bright side, several provinces have started to provide additional funds for universities to hire more faculty, and more is promised, said Mr. O’Heron. “We’re hopeful this will prevent the gap between student enrolment and faculty from widening further.”