Homeschooling as a form of primary education has existed in the Slovenian school legislation since the 1990s, yet the first parents opted for this choice no sooner than in the school year 2004/2005. Since then, we observed a steady yearly increase in the number of homeschooled students until the first school year following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the school year 2021/2022, the percentage of students being homeschooled in Slovenia rose to 0.83% of the total primary school population, placing Slovenia above the European average. During the period when institutional schooling in Slovenia was reorganized into remote education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, homeschooling became the only form of education in which parents could avoid the medicalization-based measures introduced in the field of education. To understand the trend of homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted a study involving two groups. We analyzed both the motives behind parents’ decisions to choose homeschooling during this period and the form of parallel education where children were simultaneously being homeschooled and took part in study groups. The study revealed that parents chose homeschooling more because they were dissatisfied with the school system than because they disagreed with the measures implemented during the pandemic. The results of the study also indicate that any reactive decisions by parents, upon discovering homeschooling, transformed into more enduring choices for the education of their children. Providers of private educational services also perceive the need for continued provision of parallel education services for children being homeschooled, in which they see potential for the development of their own activities. Above all, parents’ motives and the experiences of private providers of educational services reveal contemporary societal trends aimed at the personalization of education.
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