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Hello Alexandra! Recently came across your work, love it, thank you! I moved to Germany from the UK to live with my husband as he has land and a farm that’s been in his family for centuries, plus it’s beautiful here in the Allgäu (great for kids)…however didn’t realise it’s illegal to homeschool kids until after I moved and got pregnant. Blows my mind how people A) don’t actually realise that? and B) l if they do, they don’t think it’s an issue?! Madness…anyway, I have 5 years before we MUST enrol in the school system, I can’t imagine it will have changed by then, so we live 15 mins from Austria and Switzerland and I’m trying to find a legal way around it. Do you have any info or pointers to get me started? Greatly appreciated! 💛

Oh yes, there are quite some solutions as you live on the boarder! You can check with West River Academy, they might cover Austria/Switzerland as an umbrella school and you could find an address there in these countries for your kids. Otherwise flag theory, you have the option to let your credit card travel a bit ;) and maybe take a look at staatenlos.de they have a really really cool dude (Chris) that is helping Germany based families with these issues. Let me know if that helps in any way, and if not, I'll ask some more people in my network for ideas ♥️ ♥️

Fab! I’ll start with these and let you know!! Thank you kindly. Flag theory is definitely on the table but incase we aren’t able to do that by 2030, we need a plan B. Scared if I let my oldest start school, he’ll resent me for pulling him out. It’s already grating on me because his local friends and cousins will all go to school. Need to find a local network across the borders to hook him into, also for me, very difficult to socialise when the topic of conversation with other mums is school centric. I’m also still on the fence about kindergarten.

I would say it is about an authority illusion. What helps a lot is to know a teacher working in the system. The fact is there are good but ALSO bad teachers in the legacy school system. Who is more suited (no matter a way of "teaching") for passing better education to a kid? His parents knowing about their kid everything or a teacher having contact with him through few hours in class together with another 20 kids? For me the answer is obvious, the rest is a fear from unknown. * I also understand homeschooling or unschooling is not for every parent out there due to constraints and choices made given living in this particular time but it should be common sense to let those who are willing to and want to provide the education they think is the best for their kids.

Oh yes, I feel you, it's not the easy way to do it like this. But in the end it's worth it! And the people in Austria and Switzerland are much more open minded when it comes to homeschooling, at least from my experience. And Switzerland has some nice free/micro-schools, that might also be an alternative.