The South African government schooling system faces a crisis of overcrowding, teacher shortages and placement problems, and private school education is becoming increasingly unaffordable each year.
As a result, more South African parents are turning away from the traditional schooling system in favour of homeschooling every year.
This is according to Wynand van Heerden, CEO of Edify, a leading tutoring and homeschooling organisation that supports students looking for an alternative in education.
Edify now offers a homeschooling option that helps parents take their children out of the school system while maintaining structure, social interaction and a high standard of education in a flexible 08:00-13:00 day.
“There’s no doubt about it; homeschooling is increasing in South Africa. The general publicity of the South African school system has not been great, and private schools are becoming unaffordable for the vast majority of the South African population,” he said.
Some South African top private schools have raised their fees to well over R350,000 a year, with some schools reaching over the R400,000 mark in 2026. Enrolling a child in Grade R at one of these schools can costs as much as R132,000 per year, far out of reach for the majority of South Africans.
“Parents are looking for alternatives where they can get the same quality as a top private school at a fraction of the price,” said Wynand van Heerden. “So homeschooling will continue to increase for the next ten years, I can assure you of that.”
In 2017, based on data from the national census, it was estimated that there were about 100,000 home learners in South Africa.
International trends have found that home schooling grows by about 10% each year, and anecdotal evidence suggests South Africa follows this trend.
This was, however, until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. After which many children experienced the benefits of this type of schooling when schools were closed to contain the spread of the pandemic, the number of homeschooled children doubled.
COO of Edify, Gemay van Heerden, added that homeschooling has become an attractive option in a fast-changing world where the national curriculum cannot catch up with global changes and shifts in the workforce.
“A lot of parents feel their children can spend their time better learning things like AI,” she said. “With homeschooling, you can teach kids modern-day topics, because the world is changing fast.”
From 100,000 to 300,000 learners in less than 10 years
According to a peer-reviewed report by the Learning Society Institute from the University of Limpopo, South Africa had over 300,000 learners in home schooling by 2023.
Since South Africa has about 13 million school-age learners, homeschooling accounts for 2% of the whole learner population. This is mostly concentrated in Gauteng and the Western Cape.
Because this was based on voluntary surveys, these numbers are a conservative estimate of the growth behind the rise of homeschooling.
Van Heerden says there are three main reasons why parents are making the shift to home education.
“First of all, we have kids with demanding sports or cultural schedules where they have to condense their school day to the shortest possible time,” he explained.
“We also see a lot of kids who don’t settle or adapt to mainstream schooling.” Homeschooling allows the programme to be adjusted to each individual child’s needs, as opposed to mainstream schooling, where 100’s of children go through the same grade with different learning strengths and learning speeds.
Van Heerden added that there are parents who make the change because they feel they want to have control over what their child learns and are worried about the content of the South African curriculum, specifically with the enforcement of the new Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA).
The act, signed into law in 2024, allows provincial and national governments to exercise more control over school admissions and language policies. Many are concerned that the act threatens mother-tongue education and will cause increased overcrowding by making Grade R compulsory.
However, while an increasing number of parents are now choosing to homeschool their children, many come to Edify for help when they realise that taking on the responsibility of their child’s education is no simple task.
Some parents try to take on the role of teacher themselves, while others hire one tutor to teach their child every subject.
The danger of this is that parents who want their child to perform well, and a tutor who is paid to keep a child’s marks high, tend to inflate their marks. When it comes to writing their final exams, the child is not prepared and fails.
“People think they can get one tutor who will sit with their grade 8 child and do maths, science, geography, English, or that the parent can do it,” Gemay van Heerden explained.
Edify avoids this by providing children with educators who are experts in their subject and have an in-depth knowledge of the schooling system.
“We have insight into such a broad spectrum of IEB and GDE schools, so we can make sure standards align with the best private schools in the country.”
Edify’s homeschooling system offers the flexibility and tailored individual support of homeschooling, with an environment that gives children structure and social interaction, along with expertise.
“A child needs structure to their day. That’s also why we include a physical wellness element, because you can’t let children sit for six hours a day,” said Wynand van Heerden.
Edify offers a free tour of its facilities and a free baseline assessment for children considering an alternative to the schooling system.