Online schooling for igcse's

[Madmum24]

Hi,

Just weighing up my options for the igcse stage. Does anyone have experience with netschool, which seems relatively new? More expensive than interhigh, but you can register for individual subjects rather than the whole curriculum.

Also what about briteschool? I did see mention here of it having a different ethos to interhigh, but I am not sure in what way it is different?

Any feedback, positive or negative appreciated.

Live abroad. My ds (16 yo) just did 3 IGCSEs online with:
cloudlearn.co.uk/courses/
just studying it himself and asking me when he got stuck and contacted tutor as needed. Gave us great flexibility to travel whenever we wanted.

Most important thing to do to prepare for exam is to do as many past papers as possible and mark them asap (answers available on-line) so learn how to do exam.

In retrospect he could have managed much more than 3 subjects so this year much more ambitiously going for 2 A levels and a IGCSE.

Mad, what about weybridge ecademy if you are England based ?

As far as I can tell they are using Interhigh as their model, but it will be free cos it's going to be a state school.

I think you mean Wey ecademy, not weybridge. Wey haven't been approved yet, and may not be.

We used Briteschool for secondary and IGCSE, and would recommend

briteschool.co.uk

I have no idea why I have weybridge stuck in my head as the correct name.

it's wey ecademy

I looked at netschool, it's cheaper per term if you do few subjects, say 2 or 3, as long as one of them isn't maths. And then it gets more expensive.

Do you know what subjects your kid wants to do ?

There are also online tutoring courses. Catherine Mooney seems popular for English lang/lit and Sam Martell for sciences.

Might be worth joining the HE exams yahoo group, becuase on Thursdays tutors and similar are allowed to advertise so you can see what's out there.

Wey haven't been approved yet

Isn't that cutting it a bit fine ? I thought they were due to open in Septemeber.

September this year? I think not.

Why recommend something you something you know nothing about.

I didn't recommended it. Not sure how anybody could since... it hasn't opened yet so nobody knows what it's going to be like.

I was just letting her know it was potentially one of the options since cost was an element she raised.

It may well still be an option for her even with an opening in 2015.

But you seemed to think it was opening next month No it hasn't yet received approval, as I said. It may be an option if it gains approval, which it may not.

Perhaps be aware of your basic facts before posting.

But you seemed to think it was opening next month

I remembered looking at it a while back and Septmeber being mentioned. It sounded like something the OP might be interested in. So I posted it. Initially with the wrong name. That is the sum total of my "crimes against posting".

You for some reason interpeted that as a recommendation. Whereas there was no recommending going on. It's not the online school my son goes to. It won't ever be the online school my son goes to. Cos we don't live in the one country where he would be eligible.

The OP has not lost anything or risked anything because I posted (eventually the correct) name of something that may not turn out to be useful to her personally. It's not clear from the OP if she wishes her child to stick to traditional timings of IGCSEs, or if she is looking ahead as a parent of a kid who would be starting y9 this september were they in school. So 2014 or 2015 may or may not make any difference to her if Wey is of interest to her.

What's more it might yet be a useful titbit to a lurker who sees the thread title and is thinking ahead for their own kid. If it eventually gets approval and opens.

So I think your reaction is a little over the top.

OP I've remembered another one I looked at a while back that offered "per subject". Periplus From memory the course cost looked high to me, but I think they were one year courses. I suppose the advantage could be that you'd only have to commit to one year of online school rather than two if that's something you'd prefer.

I'll go have a poke around in my online ed folder on the desktop a little later to see if I can come up with anything else.

If you want to have a look the HE exam groups wiki, where interesting nuggets can be found for specific subjects both online and off.. run this address through google [email protected]
which should get you to the webpage where you can join.

I think there is another exam group too, I'll see if I can find the thread where I read about it and get a link for you.

First College appear to be offering a restricted exams option now, don't know all the details, but might be worth a poke around to see if it comes at a cheaper pircetag than the standard, and if it is suitable for your needs. If you can't find the info on the website I think it's always worth giving a school a ring and asking directly to see if something is a good fit for your specific situation.

Academus Learning (sorry no link, iPad having a sulk) I think is a "complete curriculum" option. I've had a quick poke around, but can't see any flexi options. You might have more luck if you have the time to really read through it all.

If you know the subjects you want to do, and live lessons are less important to you than tutor support, or your kid is interested in some non standard subjects there are other options.

Little Arthur offers distance options with tutor support for home educators. They offer some of the less traditional IGCSEs agriculture, enviromental management, accounting. But you might want to check out the HE Exam groups to make sure any non standard subjects you like the look of aren't at risk of getting the chop in the future. There have been quite a few changes with GCSEs and I get the impression there is more change to come.

And there's a pretty spiffy looking distance course for IGCSE Art at Online College of Art and Design.

"I remembered looking at it a while back and Septmeber being mentioned. It sounded like something the OP might be interested in. So I posted it. Initially with the wrong name. That is the sum total of my "crimes against posting".

Crimes against posting Are you for real? (I doubt it) What a woolly response. How very strange.

You don't seem to know what you're talking about generally, and didn't know the name until I corrected you, or if the school had even been approved, or the 'target' year of opening. Defensive much

Good old google, and a bit of spare time, for the rest though.

How very strange

Well at least it's not just one of us with Twilight Zone music as background for the thread.

Hello all, we've received a couple of queries about this thread, and just wanted to remind everyone to be kind and lovely and whatnot. Thanks.

Mad

There's an interhigh parents' facebook group, it's closed so you have to ask to join to see the posts, but they're a friendly enough bunch so if you add a message saying you want to join to get a feel for the ethos I don't think it would be a problem. It's a bit quiet at the moment because of the holidays, but if you ask a question it'll liven up.

First College and Briteschool probably have something similar if you ask.

Less sure about Academus, I always got a more "formal" business vibe from it. But worth an email to find out. I know somebody who sent their daughter there. It's been a few years since I spoke to her and things may have changed, but at the time, even though it wasn't her choice to send her DD there and they had been fully autonomous up to that point, she seemed pretty happy with it.

There might not be many parents who have experience of more than one school, so the sort of comparative experiences that would be most helpful to you might be a bit thin on the ground. But at least by chatting with current/former parents from a range of school you might be able to work out whose priorities/prefernces you and your kid have more in common with.

Good grief Martinetta, what the fuck is your problem?

Wey ecademy will open in Sept 2015 if it gets DofE approval this summer.

Hi - there is a very active home- ed exams network, for those looking at options for qualifications. You can actually get by very well just with a £15 textbook and free YouTube and other resources for most subjects - I speak from experience, as most of my oldest's 10 GCSEs/IGCSEs have been done this way :-) Internet schools and correspondence courses do work well for some, but most of us start out assuming that we will need them, then are delighted (and a bit scared) to find out that actually they're not necessary!

Best place to start is the HE Exams wiki , with the FAQ first. The main hub of the HE Exams network is the HE Exams Yahoogroup , and there's a facebook group for sharing resources - Home Ed Links UK for IGCSE/GCSE .

(NB re the HE Exams wiki, if you've visited before and it looks unfamiliar - permanent address is www.home-education-exams.org.uk but the server is having problems with Mediawiki at the moment so the wikia one is a mirror site.)

Good luck!

Thanks a lot for the replies. For some reason when I clicked on "threads I started" this thread did not appear, so just found it by accident now.

Will have a further look into the e-providers, and attempt to join the interhigh FB page.

Just for info. Wey Ecademy hasn't been approved

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/home_ed/2071108-State-funded-from-2015-online-school

I had an email from them to that effect Windy. What a shame. Would have been great to have a free version of Interhigh. They were planning to pay for extra-curricular activities for their students, too.

It would have been really good I think. Opened up home ed (well it's not really home ed, cyber schooling or whatever you want to call it) to people who may not otherwise have considered it.

They're appealing aren't they, but I'm afraid I never thought they'd be successful.