Homeschooling and worldschooling
Many Bali homeschool parents want to keep hold of the programme but not teach every subject themselves. This guide is about splitting the work without losing the thread.
Between doing everything yourself and handing your child’s education to someone else sits a third arrangement: you remain the director of the programme, choosing the curriculum and holding the records, while tutors teach specific subjects or slots within it. You set the destination; they drive particular legs.
This model suits parents who value the control and closeness of homeschooling but have reached the edge of their own subject knowledge, their patience or their hours. It is also the normal pattern as children get older: a parent can carry primary mathematics alone, but IGCSE physics is another matter.
It is worth saying plainly what the model is not: it is not hiring a teacher to run the whole programme, which is a different arrangement with its own page. Here you keep the curriculum, the schedule and the records, and buy specific hours of teaching within them. The distinction matters because it determines who is responsible when something drifts: in a parent-led model, that person is you.
Outsource deliberately, not by default. The subjects to hand over first are usually the ones where one of three things is true: you cannot teach them well, you cannot teach them calmly, or your child needs an examiner’s eye.
A hypothetical example: a family in Ubud keeps English, history and their project work with the parent, while a tutor takes mathematics twice a week and a second tutor runs IGCSE chemistry weekly in the run-up to mocks. The parent’s week halves; the programme stays theirs.
A tutor arriving into a parent-led programme needs a brief, not just a subject. Write one page covering four things: where the child is (current materials, recent work, levels), where the year is going (the syllabus or goal), how the child learns (pace, attention, what has failed before), and what the tutor owns (topics, homework setting, assessment).
Agree the boundaries explicitly. Which textbook does the tutor follow, yours or theirs? Who sets and marks work between sessions? What happens when the tutor’s judgement conflicts with your plan? These questions feel fussy at the start and essential by week six.
Start each outsourced subject with a trial period of four to six sessions and a review date. The review asks two questions: is the teaching sound, and does it still fit the programme? Tutors who work well inside parent-led plans expect this scrutiny and welcome it; treat any resistance to a review as information.
Ask for a short written note after each session: what was covered, how your child responded, what to reinforce. This is standard practice in our own tutoring and the single most useful habit in a mixed model, because the notes are how you keep directing a subject you no longer teach.
Introduce the tutor to your child as part of the programme, not as a replacement for you. "On Tuesdays, Sarah takes your mathematics, and on Friday we look at what you did together" keeps the child oriented and the authority where you want it. Children cooperate more readily with an arrangement they can describe.
The risk in a split model is that the records split too: your samples in one folder, the tutor’s in their head. Solve it structurally. Every taught subject, whoever teaches it, feeds the same portfolio: dated samples filed per quarter, the tutor’s session notes saved, assessments kept with yours.
A shared folder, physical or digital, with one section per subject, is enough infrastructure. The discipline that matters is timing: file at the Friday review, weekly, rather than "soon". Records filed weekly take minutes; records reconstructed in June take a weekend and still come out worse.
Give the tutor a reporting rhythm that matches your portfolio: a one-paragraph summary at the end of each month or term, in writing, suitable for filing. When a future school or university reads the file, it should be impossible to tell which subjects you taught and which you did not.
Review the split itself each term. A subject may come back in-house as your confidence grows, or move out as your child outruns you; the mixed model is meant to flex. The question at each review is simply: is each subject currently taught by the person who teaches it most calmly and competently?
Use a simple grid to make the split explicit and reviewable each term:
| Subject or area | Taught by | Sessions per week | Reporting into the portfolio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathematics | Tutor A | 2 | Session notes weekly; samples filed monthly |
| English and history | Parent | 4 mornings | Samples and reading list, quarterly |
| Science | Tutor B | 1 | Monthly written summary; test results filed |
| Projects and field learning | Parent | 1 afternoon | Photos and outputs, quarterly |
| Weekly review | Parent with child | Friday | Review note filed each term |
The honest answer is that cost scales with how much you outsource. A parent teaching most subjects with two tutor hours a week spends a fraction of a full taught programme; a family outsourcing the whole core approaches the cost of part-time schooling.
For planning figures, our rate card is published openly: Standard IDR 500,000, Advanced IDR 800,000 and Master IDR 1,000,000 per hour, with the tier confirmed in writing before the first session. Two Standard hours a week for mathematics, for example, is a predictable monthly line you can weigh against your own hours. The prices and practical arrangements guides cover packages and terms in full.
If you find yourself outsourcing nearly everything, it may be time to look at our homeschool teachers, who plan and deliver structured programmes with you each term. Otherwise, the homeschool weekly planner and the guide to keeping a homeschool learning portfolio are the practical companions to this article.
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