One homeschooler less

Aditi has finished her 12th standard exams and has joined a college of her choice (http://www.djad.in) and seems to be enjoying herself.

This is what she got in school. (TMA stands for Teacher Marked Assignments that the children taking the NIOS board exams have to submit as part of their course)

Pretty good considering that she studied completely on her own no?

Aditi's 10th standard marks

That is an aggregate of 73% and if you take Sanskrit out of the equation we get a respectable 77%.

We WERE thinking that it would be in the 90's you know, just like what all the other intelligent and hard working children like Aditi appear to be getting in their 10th standard board results nowadays.

But this result probably proves that you cannot get 90% if you:
a. Prepare only 3 months for a public exam
b. Do not have practice writing exams

Well, the 90 would have been a story worth shouting from the rooftops but probably just as well. Just as well, I think, because I do not at all feel confident about inspiring any more befuddled and misguided homeschoolers like us.

:-)

Peace brothers and sisters! 

Homeschooling Report Card: 2008-2009

Summary:
1. After 3 years of homeschooling, two of our children have done well in standardized online tests (Asset-online) for Maths, English and Science. Asset is designed to test concepts and is therefore textbook independent. This means that these tests cannot be 'prepared' for like school exams. Our children finished their syllabus and then just sat for the exam with no other preparation.
2. Their doing well implies that they 'got' most of what the textbooks were trying to 'teach'.
3. They spent less than 13% of the time that school-going children spend on academics to go through the entire syllabus for that year. Their 'school-time' was only an hour or two of any one subject a day and with long gaps for travel and other such non-academic interests.
4. The entire process of studying and getting tested was joyful to the children.

  * The Asset-online website says that more than 3000 students take each test and the percentile value reflects how many students did worse than you. So 97 percentile means you did better than 97% of the students who took that particular test.

** The Asset Online Maths test that Srikant took had pre 2005 content. (All NCERT textbooks were revised after 2005 to make the subjects simpler and more relevant to the student's daily life) This means that his scores in a test of what he actually studied would be much higher. How much higher? I don’t know and what is more, I don’t care either. :-)

Endnote:
My claims all along, that our children were learning much more than what was contained in their school books and that I was very happy with their progress and that I was not interested in testing them on just their ‘school-time’ was always angrily argued about by the numerous well-wishers of our children. So this report card is the public answer to squash these concerns. Well well-wishers, time to take YOUR children out of school now. What?

:-)