In a church hall on Dundonald Street, Eugenia Robinson looks over the shoulders of her students as they go through their daily school work. What makes this classroom different from that of a public or private school, is that there are only three full time students, including her own daughter. The RHM School House (home school) opened a year ago under the supervision of this former teacher.

The RHM School House supervises the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) home school curriculum — designed for individual instruction using PACE booklets in the core subjects.

Ms Robinson explains that the programme is accredited by the Lighthouse Christian Academy and each student is required to complete Physical Education, Information Technology and a foreign language to qualify for high school graduation.

"The Lighthouse Christian Academy are very rigid with their expectations with what students need to complete to graduate," she says. "Even if they don't complete high school in this system (home school) there is no reason they can't transfer back into the public or private school system with what they gain from this environment.

"With mathematics for example, I have tutored students from CedarBridge and other home schools, so I know we teach the exact same method."

Her home school motto reads "preparing individuals for excellence" and with only three students under her supervision, individual attention is key.

"Each child is tested once they enter the home school environment. Once the tests are marked, students are placed in their grade level for the core subjects — Math, English, Science, Social Studies and Spanish," she elaborates.

"A child that comes in from M2 may place (in American grading system) grade seven or six in English, while for Math they may place in grade seven, but for their spelling they may place somewhere else," she says. "Once this is determined, they are prescribed their PACE books which they have a certain amount of time to work through in order to move up a grade."

She explains that her own daughter's weakness is reading and English, as the test revealed, while her Math was good. "With this booklet they test your weakness and strength. The curriculum allows you to work quickly through the subjects you do well in like Math, as well as your weakest subject, like spelling or English."

This means that students who are good in one subject, but weak in another, will work on each subject until they accumulate the necessary credits (grades completed in each subject) to graduate.

"I only accept up to age 15 at the moment, but I believe if I get a 15 year old in, with the parents' support and the diligence of the child to graduate, they can catch up," she says and graduate within three years.

This thorough programme also prepares students for the ACT or SAT standardised college entrance tests.

"Parental support is very important. Just because the school focuses on individual attention, parents don't always realise the child will still need to work hard because there might be gaps in their learning," she says. "The students encourage each other to do better, and competition to improve their performance is encouraged."

In fact students use a progress chart to monitor how quickly they complete work and over the first year it became a competition to see who could climb the fastest and get the best grades.

She says this home school environment also builds their independent stamina: "I want to make my school a student centre. Even though I have a daily schedule, I just want them to know they have to complete certain tasks each day. They can be flexible in how they do that, but I encourage them to do Math and English first thing in the day."

However, be warned, just like most home schools, Ms Robinson has a zero tolerance for bad behaviour and last year expelled a student for this very reason.

Also, just because it's a home school doesn't mean children miss out on interesting classes and last year Lloyd Webb presented a photography course for the children.

At the end of last year, home school supervisors got together to organise an "end of the year" picnic for all the students under their care, as well as organised a "Dangerous Riding" presentation by the Road Safety Council for all students.

Besides the day to day operation of the home school, Ms Robinson also tutors children from Middle School to College in Mathematics and Algebra and offers summer camps from the facility.

For more information, call Ms Robinson at 293-3104.