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any options are available for parents and children who choose to opt out of regular schooling. Home schooling is among the favorites.

Actress and model Kimberly Ryder, 19, started taking home-schooling four years ago after realizing that she could not cope with her school while maintaining her busy filming schedule.

“I started filming for soap operas on TV when I was studying in a national plus school. I went home late, was sleepy and not able to concentrate in class, which influenced my scores,” she told The Jakarta Post.

Her teacher suggested that she took online home-schooling, so she could better manage her time. She picked up the idea, taking American-based online home school courses since she understands English better than Indonesian.

Kimberly, who played in movies 18++ Forever Love and The Witness, said she felt the advantage of home-schooling in terms of time flexibility as she could do her assignments during the breaks in shooting or after she arrived home.

There is another reason that makes her happy with the decision to take online home-schooling with a foreign curriculum. Unlike traditional state schools that rely on the National Examination (UN) as an evaluation tool to graduate, the assessment system in her home school is made based on her performance in her assignments.

Distance also creates a challenge, but she and her teachers try their best to solve it. For example, she has to wait for a day to get her questions answered because of the time difference between Indonesia and the US.

“The difficulty lies in math. In classrooms, the teacher shows how to solve the math on the board. My online teacher actually knows how to explain it, but they need to write it and scan the paper,” she said.

Kimberly is not alone. The initiator of Vierra band, Kevin Aprilio, 22, quit his high school and switched to home-schooling, so he could focus on his music career.

“It was a terrible blow for me when Kevin suddenly came to me and said ‘Papa, today is the last day I go to Global [his school]. It was even more difficult for [my wife] to take it,” said Kevin’s father, musician and composer Addie MS.

Addie said he was later glad that his son was responsible with his choice and finished the home-schooling program.

Businesswoman Mella Fitriansyah and her husband received numerous questions from their neighbors once they decided to give their two young children a home-school education.

“We want our children to have a lot of space for socialization that is why we chose home-schooling. With home-schooling, they can be friends with people of various ages, play with their friends and us, learn cooking with their aunties and much more,” she said in her website.

Mella tries to get her kids close to their surroundings by taking them out to learn the Transjakarta busway routes or teaching them math when they buy train tickets.

“The biggest reason for us to apply home-schooling is that we do not want the socialization process of our kids to be disturbed just because they have to study at formal schools. We also want to get connected with them,” she said.

Child psychologist Seto Mulyadi, who is among the pioneers of the home-schooling movement in Indonesia, said home-schooling had become a way to fulfill the children’s right to learn.

Dissatisfaction with formal education that makes the learning process boring is often the reason for choosing home-schooling.

“Home-schooling can answer the needs of children who do not fit with the formal school system,” he told the Post, adding that it could also be applied to young children.

The owner of Home Schooling Kak Seto (HSKS) said his community home-school that was built five years ago has some 600 students.

Seto said home-schooling could be done in one family, in a group of families or in a community. A community home-schooling has a curriculum and the home-schoolers are required to attend some classes a few days in a week.

“The sources of learning in home-schooling are not only the Internet and tutors. They can go to communities or courses. Parents should also have time to accompany the children and become their teachers, especially for young children,” he said.

The parents can pick a local or international curriculum that suits the children’s interests. If the children want to have a local academic certificate, they have to take an equivalency test that is equal to the final examination at formal school.

It means they should also study subjects that are compulsory in the examination.

Seto said the problem with home-schooling in Indonesia was that there were still some schools and universities that did not accept academic certificates that were based on equivalent examinations.

“Children who have problems in formal school should easily get access to move to homeschooling and the same easy access should be available when they want to return to the formal school. However, some schools do not understand that this is allowed under the 2003 Education System Law,” he said.

Head of the National Education Standard Body (BNSP) Aman Wiirakartakusuma said allowing participants of informal education to take the UN would require the revision of the education system law and Government Regulation No. 19/2005 on the national standard of education.

He said starting from this year, the equivalency examination would be held twice with the first one held on the same day as the regular UN and the second in July. The UN will be held in the morning, with the equivalent examination in the afternoon.