When Traditional School Stops Working: Accidental Homeschooling

School refusal. Anxiety. Bullying. Neurodiversity. If your child is struggling in traditional school, this conversation may give you hope.

In this episode of the Parenting Collective Podcast, I sit down with Alexander Cork from Crimson Global Academy (CGA) to talk about online schooling, accidental homeschooling, and why more families are exploring flexible education options for children with ADHD, anxiety, school refusal, and other neurodiverse needs.

As a parent and conscious parenting coach, I know how heartbreaking it can be when your child is unhappy at school. We discuss why forcing children through an environment that isn’t working can make things worse, and how alternative education pathways can provide the circuit breaker some families desperately need.

In this conversation, we cover:

✨ Online schooling for neurodiverse children

✨ ADHD, anxiety and school refusal

✨ Bullying and mental health in schools

✨ Why more families are becoming "accidental homeschoolers"

✨ Supporting children with depression and social anxiety

✨ How online education can help gifted and neurodiverse learners

✨ The importance of finding the right educational fit for your child

✨ Why social connection doesn't have to come only from school

If you are a parent navigating school struggles, anxiety, ADHD, autism, bullying, or homeschooling, I hope this episode reminds you that there are options and that you are not alone.

💛 Subscribe to Parenting Collective for weekly conversations that help parents create calmer homes and stronger connections.

Follow Alexander Cork: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-cork/

Email: a.cork@cga.school

Follow Crimson Global Academy:

Website: https://www.crimsonglobalacademy.school/au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crimsonglobalacademy/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crimsonglobalacademy

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CrimsonGlobalAcademy

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@crimson_global_academy

I would appreciate it greatly if you could please LIKE and FOLLOW this podcast and if you are not following me over on instagram, head over there for all of my top tips and advice around sleep and parenting @parentingcollective.au.  I also offer a free 15 minute phone chat to run through all your questions CLICK here to book your FREE 15 minute chat

Much Love 💞

Donna Moala 
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to this week's episode. So this week, always excited, as we know, I am joined by Alexander Cork from Crimson Global Academy. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation because, as parents, many of us grew up believing there was only one path when it came to education, traditional education that still has not really changed over the last hundred years. You went to school, you followed a curriculum, and hopefully found your way through it. You know, teachers are all doing the best they can. Teachers are just worth their weight in gold, but they are really struggling in this day and age trying to support kids in this generation. But for many families today, particularly at those navigating school around anxiety, like neurodiversity, learning difficulties, or simply a child who's just not thriving in that traditional classroom. So parents are beginning to ask whether there might be another way. Like, what is there? Is there just homeschooling? What other way can we do this? That's not just me doing the homeschooling. So Alexander is passionate about helping families explore what education can actually look like when the learning's built around the child rather than expecting every child to fit into the same system. So through his work with Crimson Global Academy, he's supported families from around the world who are looking for flexible and personalised approaches to education while still maintaining strong academic outcomes for their child. So today we're diving into alternative education, school anxiety, online learning, and what parents can do when they know something just isn't quite working for their child, but they just really aren't anywhere, they're not sure where to turn next. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did. It is really open my eyes in regards to an alternative to traditional schooling. We'd love to hear your comments. Let me know your thoughts and speak to you next week. Morning, Alexander, and welcome to Parenting Collective.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Thanks very much, Donna. It's great to be here with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

We were just getting to know each other a little bit, and the conversation was so good I had to pause and we have to record it because this is what I want to share with the listeners of all um of your information around what you do. So if you could share with the listeners who you work with and uh what you do for families out there.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah, so I'm head of admissions for an online school. Uh the school's called Crimson Global Academy. Um, the shorthand is CGA. And I've been at the school for three or four years now. I've been at the wider umbrella company, which is Crimson Education, for 10 years. And at CGA, we were initially created to kind of like help, you know, gifted kids and kids who wanted to go to top US and UK universities. Because that's that's on brand for Crimson Education. That's what they specialize in, US UK admissions. But the reality has been very different. The audience that has been coming to us over the last three or four years has been a lot of students who don't fit into traditional schooling models for various reasons. And some of them are like those push factors, you know, they just don't have time for physical school anymore because they are an aspiring, you know, ballet dancer, for example, and they're training ridiculous hours, or they're an athlete that trains ridiculous hours. Um, or you know, they're they're a student who travels with their family quite a lot. Uh like their, you know, family moves for work and they have to move school every five minutes, or they just have the lifestyle of traveling quite a lot. And that's what they want to do. You know, so those a lot of those reasons, those reasons like I guess are like, you know, uh a lot of those families come to us, and it's not necessarily an urgent request of like, hey, we need to move school ASAP. It's more like, oh, this is something we're thinking about and would like to do in the future. But then on the other hand, you've got this whole pool of families that are termed now accidental homeschoolers. And I think it's a really great phrase, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

It's it's like to know exactly. Oh my gosh, it's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

It's just and there's been quite a few stories about it. And I think like increasingly families are aware that this is a category that they themselves are fitting into. So some families come and say, oh, we are essentially accidental homeschoolers. We never had the intention of going down this route, but circumstances the way they are, we need to homeschool. And I guess like from our perspective, we are probably the most school-like homeschool option. You know, we are actually a registered school in New Zealand. We are a registered school in the US. But in Australia, because of the state-based system and all the rest of it, we're not yet an Australian registered school, because I guess there is no such thing as an Australian registered. You have to go state by state. It's a whole mess. But anyway, um, so families use us as part all of their homeschool plan here in Australia, and then use the qualifications that their children earn in order to go to university. But like the school that we offer is like it has the principal and the deputy principal and yeah, it has exams and assessments and competitions and all so it's very much like a private school. Yeah, yeah. And it's really interesting. Like in in Australia, the concept of private online schooling, or even like online schooling for so long has been, you know, distance ed, farmer families type of thing. That's been the like the dumb thing for distance education, you know, government-run programs, etc. But there was very few private schools that had an online offering. You look at the US and European markets, they are light years ahead of Australia, New Zealand in terms of yeah, in terms of this offering. You know, they've got some fantastic schools. Some of the best schools in the US are online schools in terms of their results and everything else. So we're we're playing a bit of a catch-up game here in Australia, New Zealand and really just trying to show families that, you know, this type of school exists, and then also really trying to break the mold in terms of like how much flexibility the online space has, right? Because you know, we have this part-time kind of option where families can join for one or two subjects, or we have the full-time option, of course. We have one-to-one classes, we have group classes, we have you know students from 60 plus countries and all these types of things. So, yes, we're a traditional school in many ways, but very different than many others. But certainly it's it's really been interesting to see a lot of these families who have been pushed out of traditional schooling due to mental health, uh, bullying, medical needs. I would say, yeah, like yeah, a lot of the kids that we meet at the moment uh neurodiverse and they just are falling through the cracks and all these types of things. So it's nice to be able to offer those families at school that supports their child, supports the parent. A lot of the time I'm saying the parents, like, how's this journey been for you? And it's as hard for them as it is for their kids. That's not that. Yeah, you know, that's not our own. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So they're looking for some support too, just as much as their kids are. And yeah, we're just trying to kind of you know do the best we can and fill this gap that is obviously there because you know, we see a lot of parents. Yeah, we see a lot of parents who are like, I wish this was around when you know my kid was starting school, or I wish this was around when I was at school, or we're not gonna be able to do it for ages, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Just didn't know it existed. I really didn't. Yeah, and yeah, like I was saying to you, is the trouble that we went through as a family was it was really traumatic because you know, our eldest is 21, so that's not that old, but she you didn't talk about ADD, she was embarrassed about it, you know. Like it's not even ago, you know, and that journey we were felt like very solo on that. And look, on the long run, it's worked out okay. She they went to private schooling and it's a great school, but it's not equipped for neurodiverse kiddos. And we can talk about stats, but I don't even know what the stats would statistics are now. But just in my little donor world, you know, my 21-year-old who didn't want to talk about ADD, no one talked about it, I was going to share it with anyone, to now it's really talked about. And I think it's a good thing. It can be a negative thing, but the neurodiverse or neurospicy kiddos, as we talk about, with all these different levels, are not, well, like you said, square peg in a round hole. They are spectacular. Their brains are spectacular, they're highly intelligent, but you get them to go to school and read a book about, I don't know, mountains. They're not interested in it, they're not going to read that book, you know. So people don't understand neurodiverse brains. They can do lots of things at once and they can hyperfocus, but they need to be able to have that perfect support for their brain to learn. And that they can be anything. So it sounds like this academy would very much be exactly what these kids might need.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah, it is. It is a lot of the like, I mean, look, I'm not going to say we're a you know silver bullet for every family and every single kid. But it I think it's really important to see that there are a lot of schools that have created these support programs outside of their traditional classroom. So you've got your traditional classroom with you know 25, 26 kids or whatever it is. And then outside of that, you've got your learning support, your academic enrichment programs, selective classes, streaming classes, all these types of things. We which are really trying to, you know, how do you cater to students who are either one or two standard deviations above or one or two standard deviations below the norm, or students who who just learn in different ways or who need different conditions to learn. And it's like schools are trying to yeah, create this wider net for these kids. And and I will say some schools do it super well, and some kids, you know, are really supported by that wider net, and that's fine. But then I think sometimes like a school needs to know when they are not the best fit. I'll give you an example. I'll give an example. There was a a family I spoke to just a week ago, incredibly anxious kid, like general anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, just really, really struggling. And the school said, Hey, we're gonna have our counsellor meet you at the front gate, and we'll try and take a couple of steps into the school. And if we get into the front doors of the school, amazing. We've had a win for that day. But if you know you get to the front gates and you want to run back home, that's fine. And the the parents were going through this with their kid for over like three or four weeks. Front gate, a couple steps, run back, front gate, a couple steps. And I I would have said, you know, as a parent, but certainly as an educator, hey, have you thought about homeschooling for a while? Have you thought about it?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

I don't think people on even I just really don't think people know that something like this exists as I really truly. I know you're in it and you've been in it for four years, and you're like, oh my goodness, but I've never heard of it.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I think a lot of people just don't know that uh there is like I think a lot of people still associate homeschooling in Australia with parent-led teaching. Absolutely, that's a hundred absolutely what I would think.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

And anyone I speak to, again, I speak to I work with lots of parents, that's the biggest fear is like even for us when we went through everything, you know, definitely we're looking at different options, Montessori and different schools or whatever. But there was not an option for me to be able to teach my child, even if it was led. Yeah, like I just don't think that dynamic in my family would have been successful.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

To leave it up to the parent, I think again, everybody I'm speaking to wouldn't know something like this exists. So it just needs to be known, really.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

I agree. I think the states in Australia kind of make the homeschool process deliberately difficult because you know they would prefer students to stay in a school environment. But like I think that's such a not a good fit for a lot of kids. They would prefer to be yeah, homeschooled. They are often disruptive to the kids who are at school. You know, we we see some students who have some behavioral issues and everything and who just are not enjoying school and are really like acting out, and they just need to have a safer environment at home for a little while. Yeah, you know, I see a lot of questions on like the Homeschool Australia page of parents being like, I'm new to homeschooling, what do I do? Yeah, I have no idea where to start. Yeah, and it's interesting, like as well, you know, the amount of queries that we receive that are either parent-led or or student-led. And I see a lot of the queries increasingly being student-led, which is like right, right. Or the students saying to their mum or dad, I don't want to go to school anymore. I want to online school or I want to homeschool. You know, I want to do distance ed or I just don't want to go to school anymore. Like I was talking to my mum and my mum said, Well, you know, school refusal like become such a thing. And um, that's how my mum talks a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Oh, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Sorry, it's all the mums out there, but uh it's that idea that like students know that school refusal is a thing now. You know, people are like, why is school refusal increasing so much? Well, I'll tell you why, because kids are aware that that's an option for them. Right, they don't have to go to school, they don't, and you know what?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

The oldies, look, I'm old anyway, but I'm in it. I'm like I keep saying, working with parents for the last 10 years. So I'm evolving with them, even though my kids have got bigger. And I can just compare, you know, five, six years ago, then my own childhood, how easy it was to parent. There was a phone on the wall, no distractions, you know, news at six o'clock at night on TV, fat cat when you go went to bed. So we didn't know any different. So we had to and were made to do what our parents tell us to, which is lovely. Lucky thing. But our children these days are just know too much, and it has destroyed so many things, but it can also be a really big benefit to give them, okay, and this can be a little bit more. Yeah, like listen, okay. It can be. What do they say? Yeah, because yeah, yeah. You know, uh that's the biggest thing because I'm a conscious parenting coach as well, and that just means actually being aware. It's not anything airy, fairy, totally gentle. It's like being aware and conscious. What's my you know, 14-year-old saying? Okay, you're not going to be permissive and like, oh, poor child, you don't need to go to school. Okay, these are the options. What are we gonna look at? What are you thinking? You know, yeah, rather than the old school of us was like, do it, just do it. Yes, and stop winged about it, exactly, and just do it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, kids just these days um know too much.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

They're definitely like in a good way, in a good way, I would say. For the like the kids who come to us, it's definitely in a good thing. Like the students know that the environment that they've got at school is no longer going to work for them. They just they're and and like I always say to parents who come to us and they have this accidental homeschooling type thing, and they feel like you can feel the sense of defeat that they've got in their voice.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Because everyone judges, everyone, yeah, everyone judges. Um and you know what it happen it happens all the time to to to go out on the limb, which isn't, it sounds like again, you know, the academy, it's amazing, but um, and what people need, but it's not uh it's not um run of the mills.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Not widely accepted yet. Yeah, not widely accepted yet. But like it is uh, you know, I say to parents, uh, you know, I can see, I can hear the like the tone of your voice, you feel like you failed your kid. But I'm going to you know, I I try and lift parents up in that conversation and say, hey, the fact that you're here talking to me when you never thought that you'd probably be talking to someone like me in an online school type of thing, shows that you're listening to your kid.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

You know, that you're trying to do the best by them. Absolutely the worst thing, the worst thing you can do, and this is to all the listeners out there, is if your kid is consistently not enjoying school and is like not having a good experience there, not getting academic progress out of the school, whatever, is to continue to drop them off at the front gates and hoping for things to change.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

It's not gonna and you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Hope is not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy, it's not a phase. Yeah, I know, and some people maybe it's just a phase, maybe you know, and and I get it because homeschooling is not just a change for the child, it's a change for the parents too. It might mean someone has to, you know, reduce their days in office, or it might mean you know, constant supervision at home, or it opened this Pandora's box of how do I even apply for homeschooling, which I totally get. It's a scary thing. But to continue to send your kid to the front gate to these schools that they're not enjoying, it's not going to improve anytime soon. I haven't seen a student.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah. And after dropping them off for another three months, things miraculously improved. No, like it's you know, very, very rare, very, very. Oh, it's really.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

And the thing is, I don't always want to go into the negative, but I do like sharing lived experiences. That's what I talk about in my um stories in my podcast, is living it with a with children that had anxiety and the eldest being severely depressed, suicidal, all of those things saying that your child's going to, whoever's listening is that's going to happen to. But when you get sucker punched that the child will not go to school and you're trying to keep your child alive, you know, you know, like that's not dramatic. But if you think, if you take it back quite a bit of like anxiety and depression, you know, what's the most important thing? What is the most important thing that your child is okay and coping? So it doesn't mean they have to be forced to go to school all the time. There's other options, you know. And yes, you might have to change your work and all of that sort of stuff, but that's our role as parents.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

We have to keep adjusting, we have to be more conscious and aware to hopefully get our kids educated, which now knowing that you exist, that would obviously make it a lot easier, the parents.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I I hope so. I hope so. You know, it's it's never easy education, and it's never easy when you've got a kid who is in that area where they can't go to school anymore, and that's why they're looking for an alternative like this. But ultimately, you know, oh, I can share with you a really cool success story that I absolutely love.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

So, this is like one of those parents who, you know, came to us in this funeral circumstance. Her daughter was probably one of the more challenging behavioral cases I've seen at CGA. We don't tend to have a super high percentage of like really tough behavioral cases, but she was in that situation. And she worked with our private teachers, and we kind of had this thing where we can do incremental enrollment where we start out with one or two subjects, see how it works, like just see how it goes. Can she adjust? Is she open to it? Right. And it worked, and we added a few more and a few more, and then she ended up pretty much doing like a quasi-full-time type private, you know, lessons. It wasn't like a full school day, she was working on her mental health as well. Her mum was actually a psychologist as well, which was uh an interesting combination, I guess. Um, and look, the overall intention at the time was like, let's just get her through the next three months and six months and nine months, right? Like it wasn't like, what are her university goals or anything? No, that was not part of the conversation. We're just kind of like just trying to get her back on track. Anyway, about two and a half years after her first CGA enrollment, the mum emailed in October of last year and said, Alex, awesome news. We're going back to physical school. Yeah, because that was always the goal. That was always the goal for her to get to a point where she felt ready to go back to a physical school. And I was so happy, I was like, gosh, you know, uh, to the mum. I was like, I was celebrating so much for her and and for her kid as well. She's still actually in part-time enrolled with us, she's still doing some math classes with us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But um, you know, it is that kind of uh like just giving the kids space. Yes, I I I often feel like with these kids who do have, you know, mental health challenges, behavioral challenges, and you know whatnot. And a lot of those challenges are exacerbated at school.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

But at the same time, we often see school as the place where students need to work on those skills. Oh, you're you're anxious. Oh, go to school, be surrounded by your friends, and it will be better. And I'm like, yeah. I'm like, don't I don't get that? Yeah, I really don't get that thinking. Or like, you know, you've got behavioral challenges. Oh, go to school. I'm sure like the environment of you know, these hormones flying around everywhere, like that won't that won't trigger that at all, will it?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Yeah, why are we forcing this?

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah, like forcing skin. I I always see like kids who have like a lot of accidental homeschoolers, I guess, have these like underdeveloped skills in you know working with people and whatnot. And and people feel like, well, if I just continue sending them to school, those skills will develop. But I I often think like it's really showing the gulf between where their kid is at and where other kids are at, and and their kid is even more um you know likely to kind of be hyper-aware that this is not a space for them and be like, I'm I'm out, I'm I'm done, I'm done. And so I see families like that kid that I was just mentioning, where taking them out of school, working on the underlying issue, whether it be behavioral or uh learning needs or you know, whatever it might be, then kind of saying, All right, like let's make the goal to go back to school one day when you're ready. I mean, some some kids make that goal and never go back, they just stay with us until graduation, and that's that's awesome. We're we're happy to have them because they find that this is an environment that actually works better for them. But anyway, the the kids who do want to go back, like it it's great that they have that space and time to work. You know, I was talking to um a professor. Yeah. Professor from QUT, like Rebecca Ringless, she does a lot of research in homeschooling, and she calls it like a circuit breaker. You know, this kind of like you yeah, you're in this, you're on this treadmill at school, trying to keep up, trying to keep up, trying to keep up. Masking, masking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And and you just need to step back. And it's not for a week, it's not for a fortnight, it is for like six months, maybe a year, maybe two. Yep. And like that just may be what your kid needs.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Yeah, and and the thing is when our children are not cookie cutter, and you watch everybody else's kids just do it, and then we all the whole family doesn't feel like we can fit. Um, and not in a real dramatic way, just these slight things, and so a little bit of ADD, a little bit of anxiety, and then the masking and then the hormones. But when I talk about this and on reflection, I was so frightened, you know, and my husband's not a scared kind of person, but it comes from fear of like, what the hell? You what do you mean you're not going to school? Or you it's just that bigger picture of like what's going to happen. But you know, when I look at the girls and going to high school and the troubles that they had for a couple of years, they miss so much school, you know. But they were able to, you know, like I said, a bit of a circuit breaker at home and then do a bit of work here and they're both going to uni in a different way, you know, not the ATAR way. But why I'm what I'm saying that to that is people and kids do not have to go to physical schools to be able to get what they want these days. It's just regards to education. And these kids work often better in that calm, safe space at home, you know, and being obviously from high education, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, whether they for a school like us, I think a lot of families worry about like the social side. Actually, I just I wrote a blog recently on our um on our page called, but what about the social side?

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

And because it's such a common question that we get. And it it's you know, that kind of stepping away from school and and disconnecting from the social element of school can be the best thing for kids.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

100%.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

There was a student that was got in Queensland. She was seeing an educational psychologist, she has a you know slight learning needs and everything. Lovely kid though. And she's at a you know pretty solid girls' school there in Brisbane, but she has some some hearing loss. And she was struggling in class because you know it's she couldn't quite hear everything that was going on in class, obviously. And the mum will look into CGA, was nervous because her educational psychologist was like, do not do online schooling, it is the worst thing for your kid, it will absolutely like devastate her social life and everything else. And the mum was like a bit terrified. She was like, Well, this school is not really working out for us either. So this CGA option, yeah, sounds interesting. So she hedged her bets, she paid our fees and she paid the school fees as well. I think everyone's gonna be able to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like it held her spot. She was so nervous that CGA would not work that she held her kids' spot for a term just to see if you know they needed to go back. Her daughter's now in her second year of CGA, almost third, I think. And within a term of being at CGA, they fired the educational psychologist. They're like clearly, you know, yeah, it's when we talk about like it's not the darkest. They don't know, they don't know. It's not because online schooling, like I think a lot of people think online schooling, yeah, COVID learning. Uh you know, the online school space has come so far, yeah, that was like you can kind of look at you know COVID being a blessing to the online school space in just how much research of what not to do came out of that time period. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, a whole bunch of kids sitting in a in a uh a Zoom room with no cameras on and whatnot, and a teacher just being like, Is anybody there? So that's that's what not to do. Yeah, so there's still this this kind of ingrained view, but like there are certainly some students who you know are really wanting to give this a go, would really thrive in an online space. And it's just a matter of of trying it out and you know finding that solution, and then sounds amazing. Going from there, might go back to a physical school, might not be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Oh, totally, and you have hope, don't you? And when you're we were talking about the social aspect aspect, and again, us going through things that were different, obviously, than what we're talking about, but definitely not being able to go to school. Um, they the girls did things they loved, like one of the girls did so, and so she'd be so down and depressed and really finding it hard to do much, but she'd go to the softball on Saturday. So, what I'd say is what it gives is um the circuit breaker, and what is your child like? Do they like to horse ride? Do they like to do some art? Yes, like going to church. Yes. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

But you've got a lot of equestrian kids.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Oh, there you go. Yeah. So they don't have to go to school for social. Social kids for for some of the kids, and one of our kids was really um, you know, bullied, and it was really a big part of the depression. Um, so it's it, yeah, gosh, there's so many things we could talk about.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Girls are tough.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Oh girls are tough.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Yes, yeah, yeah, girls are yeah, I I see a lot of bullying cases. Totally a 13 to 15, like early high school girls, year seven to ten, uh, they've got long memories. They they bully very differently to the boys. Like boys, you know, I get a couple of boys coming in and saying, Oh, I'd be bullied, like, you know, maybe beaten up or something like that. And it's traumatic.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

I'm not sure, but yeah, girls emotionally bullied.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Uh, girls, but girls are emotionally bully over like such a long time frame. Like, you know, that whole thing of like women never forget. I I think it's kind of true. It must be. Yeah. Um, like I speak to girls who say, you know, they start term one. We get a lot of girls coming to us due to bullying at the start of the school year. Right. Because they had hoped that what had happened in term four last year had kind of been forgotten. You know, they had a they had bad blood with a couple of kids, they were being ostracized or isolated by a couple of kids, and they really hope that that had ended. Turn one next year rolls around, the exact thing happens again. It picks up from where it left off, and they're like, we can't do this for another school year. We can't. So yeah, we've got a lot of kids who leave. Yeah, so the social side I find it's funny because like a lot of kids leave their school because of the social side, and they're looking for you know, a different option. And then, yeah, you're right. Like a lot of our kids, I say, if you're going to be full-time in an online school, join a local extracurricular. Join a local, you know, club of sports, swimming. Yeah, yeah, you know, equestrian clubs. You've got kids who have done scouts, and yeah, you know, we've got students from 60 countries, and we do international camps and we do uh local camps and meetups and all these types of things.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

It is it is like it would have been amazing for our family. That's why I was so interested to get you on, because I'm like, it's just a lost, crazy world for us parents, you know, unless, you know, yeah for you guys to to reach out to to be guests, which is great because I'm like, oh my gosh, it now opens my eyes to this and I can share and talk about it. You know, I talk to so many parents. Now I can be if they're having troubles, it's like, we'll look into this, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

It looks sounds like well, I people say, Would you put your boy? Because I've got a little toddler running around. Um, would you put him into CGA? And you know, I've got a local primary school, a stone stowaway. Yeah. Um, so all going well, he goes there and whatnot. But if we decide to travel for a year, I am taking him out of that school and we're going to do maths, English, and science and travel the world. Like, you know, yeah. Yeah, right. Or then there's the option of like if he's you know getting bullied or if he's really not enjoying it or whatever. Yep, like 100% take him out. Like, I'm not going to uh I think there's a lot of parents who you know put their kid into a private school in particular, like you know, top private schools, and they say, Oh, like uh success. We're we're done. We've we've done our parenting bit, we got our kid into our dream school, and then it quickly becomes their child's nightmare. And and then they don't they don't adjust, they don't, you know, like one thing Rebecca English said was like make sure you're picking the school that suits the child in front of you. Right, the child that is in front of you, yeah, the child that's in front of you this year, not not little, not the child because the kid who was in front of you in year seven, you know, uh bubbly and loving school and loving life and everything. Awesome, that's great. Send them for that school. But I was talking to a mum recently, poor thing, she was she was crying on the phone and remembering what school was used to be like for her daughter. Yeah, yeah. How how she used to be a state swimmer, she used to be the top gymnast, she used to be a great academic and everything, and and now she's a shut-in. She doesn't come out of her room. Oh no, I you know, and I applaud those families who say, hey, like whatever we've been doing, that's the past. What is our future? Whatever our future is, it's not going to be yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

No, it's hard to pivot for someone. Yeah, it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

It's so hard to pivot. It's so hard. I get it, but like you know, it it is really it's really hard to maintain a status quo that's obviously not working. So yeah, because then you yeah, for any families, yeah, for any families out there struggling through this whole you know, school refusal or finding the right environment or anything, you know, if you've got the space, if you've got the opportunity, try online, you know, like with teacher support. There's us, but of course there's other options as well. You know, we're probably the most though.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

We're only talking about you today. We're not talking about everybody else.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

That's true. But I do say to parents, like, you know, if if I think they're a better fit elsewhere, I'll I'll let them.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Oh, totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Um, but you know, in the in the private online school space, there's pretty much CGA and not much else in Australia at the moment. So yeah, yeah, yeah. We're really happy to to kind of see where families can work out a plan and so that incremental enrollment is a good option as well. So um, yeah, really happy to to work with some some families and help some students to you know find their feet again and love it, yeah, really simple. Make make progress. And then we have those gifted kids, and always that's a different podcast.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

Yeah, and then it's a different podcast, you know. And that and this is why, like I said, I didn't I didn't have that. And if I had the gifted kids, then maybe I would have talked about that. But you do like this is just a small little facet of what your your academy does, and that's why I was so interested in it. I wouldn't say it's small anymore. No, not small, no, well, that's right. But you know, there there's it it it sounds like the academy is very diverse, it's not about just what we're talking about with with anxiety and school refusal. That's what we're focusing on today, but um, yeah, like it sounds amazing. Um, so just to finish up then, because obviously it was uh UK US started or based, sounds like I'm not sure it might be wrong with that.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

I'm originally at Kiwi School, so our school and everything's Kiwi based. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

So then obviously we'll give all everything in the show notes to to contact um you but can people reach out to you directly to see um if they can have a conversation? Like how would if someone was obviously my family, uh, where should they go?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously CGA.school is our website. We've got all these videos on YouTube as well, which are really interesting to see our students and families. Um my email is a.cork at cga.school, uh C-O-R-K, just like the cork you pull out of a bottle. I'll put that in the nice. But yeah, really yeah, really happy to put some uh you know plans together for families, answer some basic questions, you know. Like some families say, Do I need to contact you only when I want to enroll, or can I just ask for info? Like just it's fine, just ask for info and and then we'll go from there. Um, but yeah, really happy to chat and see what we can do.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Oh, I love it. Well, uh yeah, thanks for the fantastic conversation. And I hope someone hears this that is, you know, thinking that they might need to, like you said, accidental homeschooling. I love that. It's like um accidental co-sleeping because I'm a sleep specialist as well, and you know, people like co-sleep, and now I've got this toddler in my sleep on bed. So we're all doing the best we can when it comes to parenting. Yeah, it's a crazy busy world. Our kids are absolutely really highly informed, which is a good and a not so good thing sometimes. But if your child's coming to you and they're you know talking about the possibility of homeschooling, this is definitely sounds like an amazing option.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Yeah. Exactly, exactly. It's not something that you just say, well, no, you've only got three years of school to go, just put the notice on the grindstone and deal with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that is that is such uh I you know that line of thinking may have worked 30, 40 years ago when when students weren't as aware of the world around them. But you're right, like they're so hyper-aware now that they know that school refusals are thing and that online school is a thing. And so they say, well, actually, no, I don't want to do this anymore. That's what I want to do. So yeah, I think it's a really interesting time and in and space for parents and students navigating education, just the amount of options and alternatives that they have.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

It sure is. Thanks, Alex. And um I'll, like I said, put all the notes in the show notes, everything in the show notes for people to contact you. But have a great day.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Thanks so much, Donna.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Thanks, Alex. Bye. So if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave me a rating and review. I love reading all of your messages. So shoot me a DM over on Instagram. It is parentingcollective.au. I also offer a free 15 minute, no obligation phone chat. If you'd like to book one, head over to my website, www.parentingcollective.com.au, and request one there. So try to remember to be kind to yourself and always know you're doing the best you can every day, no matter what your day is looking like. Until next time, much love.