The answer is that it really depends, it depends on what sort of options you have in terms of the schools you can attend and also the sort of academic support system you can build for yourself at home. If you have a school with great teachers that is obviously a great asset. You would always want to learn from people who are better than you and know more than you. To add to this, if you have equally great and curious peers at school, that is also a source from where you can learn. You discuss ideas with your peers, solve homework together and share your knowledge with each other. This is an analogy that I’m drawing from my experience in college. Is all of this possible in an isolated environment? Also, another important factor is competition. You write exams, homework, assignments etc that in the end test your understanding. Given that all of these are well prepared by teachers, this can give a pretty strong signal that you have a strong understanding of the subject. Contrast this with the fact that all of this won’t be available to you when you’re home-schooled. I’m not at all implying that getting the highest grades completely reveal if you understand the subject. But competition does motivate us to perform better. There certainly are advantages to being home-schooled too. You can learn things at your own pace and don’t have to follow a pre-decided plan that has been drawn up for an entire school of kids who probably aren’t even interested in learning. If you have great teachers teaching you and you really are learning stuff and not just studying, this is significantly better than attending a mediocre school.
