Released into the wild - Home Away From Home Schooling

So, here's something I've been thinking of trying ever since I realised just how much I hate classroom teaching:

Home schooling other people's children.

I think there must be people out there who would like their kids homeschooled, but can't do it themselves. Surely it would be possible for an enterprising person to establish their home as a "private school", which is really more of a daycare centre for school-aged children? The "house parent" can then act as the tutor, guiding the kids through their distance-education programme, just like an actual parent would in a normal home schooling environment.

It would be perfect for a retired teacher or someone with an education background who isn't interested in working in a school environment any more, and I think a small class of ten or fifteen kids from various ages would make for an interesting "family" environment - one that might help some students more than being in a cage with fellow rabid monkeys... er, sorry... a class with twenty-or-so of their peers.

Plus, if the "teacher" is actually a tutor - helping the students impress the markers, rather than marking the students, it would make the learning process more of a team effort.

And as long as everyone is on-track, curriculum wise, the school day can be augmented by all sorts of activities you can do with a small "family" group, but can't do with a "normal" class in a "normal" school - things like everyone getting together in the kitchen to make a meal for lunch, or everyone going down to the park for some afternoon exercise.

If you had a class of about 15, and all of those private school fees were going into paying the wage of one teacher (or a class of 20-25 supporting two teachers - one for primary and one for secondary, or one for humanities and one for sciences), then the vast bulk of the fees would be funnelled back into providing resources directly for those children. Your child's school fees aren't going towards the upkeep of the soccer pitch regardless of whether or not he or she plays soccer - they are going into whatever your kid is actually doing.

I don't rightly know what you'd call this, though. I'm leaning towards "Pod Schooling" - largely because I like playing with collective nouns, but also because it's not exactly "home schooling" if it's at someone else's home, but it's not exactly a school, either.

Someone out there go and try it, and then tell me how it works out.