Interhigh & other online schools - comments & experiences please

[beingamumgivesyougreyhair]

Hi everyone,
Have you had a bad experience with an online school?
Interhigh seems to be the most promoted online school on the internet, and here in these forums, especially among some regulars.
But having been caught out before I'm more interested in being forewarned and forearmed of things that you usually only find out the hard way or when it's too late.
We are definitely on board with the whole concept of online schooling and the obvious benefits that it provides over bricks n mortar traditional schooling but there are more online schools springing up all the time and it is getting harder read between the lines and make an informed choice when they all sound the same.
If you have / are attending any of the internet schools with live lessons, your comments and experiences will be much appreciated.

Two of my children are doing myonlineschooling.co.uk

Its a brand new one that just opened last year, so the numbers are still low, which is brilliant for my aspies, as they dont deal well with big groups. I find they get a lot of individual attention and i have regular feedback. She finds most of the lessons fun, and there are 4 of 5 other kids in each of her lessons. She has been moved up a year, which has given her confidence, and she has come on in leaps and bounds compared to her old school, where she was a school refuser and on a one plan and spent a lot of time working outside the classroom with an LSA. Now she is engaging really well with her lessons most of the time, with only a few low level issues that are being worked with. Ive just signed her up for another year as she is just happier in general.

My 17 year old is also now studying IGCSE history with them as he wasnt allowed to do it at school before, even though its a strong interest of his.

It appears to be the only online school that ive found that allows you to take individual subjects rather than as a block, which i think is brilliant for home educators who may just want their child to do one or two core subjects for instance.

Just what I was looking for!
Thanks.

How much does it cost ?

Thanks Bran,
We were looking at liveschool.co.uk the other day. They are an actual bricks n mortar college that has recently branched out into online schooling so only 6 live subjects available atm but they do other subjects by tutor led online correspondence. So a mix of both would cover many subjects.
Other attractions: small class sizes and the price £300 / year / subject for the live school!

They are so new (2 yrs) that I doubt there will be anyone on here with experience to share yet?.

Ophelialovescats ; I just read from the myonlineschooling website that they charge £920 per term (3 instalments) for 5 IGCSE's.

Thank you beingamum

myonlineschooling costs £2400 per year spread over 10 monthly installments. This is primary and pre-GCSE secondary, and from september there will be 12 lessons a week

My son doing 1 GCSE, I pay £700 a year and he gets 2 hours a week for that

Dd has been at Interhigh for 3 years, I have nothing but praise for them it’s changed dd’s Life

OP "Interhigh seems to be the most promoted online school on the internet, and here in these forums, especially among some regulars."
I think this refers to you @Schroedingerscatagain!
If they aren't already paying you per post, they should be.

TBF, sometimes people have had such awful experiences with school again and again, that you find something that works so well, its hard not to be a bit evangelical. You see this often with home ed itself, or with certain ways of doing it, like unschoolers think its the best thing ever, or online school works so well for some that we just want to tell the world

To be honest 3littlepigs they don’t even know me as the mum who posts about them

But as Brant says, when something works and works well and you see so many other kids like mine suffering then yes you try and help by sign posting an option that the authorities rarely tell them about

I recently spoke with the nurse specialist in autism in my area about the school, she was virtually in tears as she had never heard about Interhigh and had over 30 children in her care out of education

If my chat helps one single child access education that wasn’t able to before then I will have contributed something to society and stopped one more vulnerable family suffering

HTH

My DC was at Interhigh for about a year and a half. I would not recommend it although I appreciate it might work for some people. You can pm me if you want details.

@Schroedingerscatagain

I think the point people are making is that whilst they are obviously very happy for you, for others Interhigh has not been a positive experience. I have read quite a few posts that say how they have suffered at Interhigh when it fell short on basic standards expected of any secondary education but especially one you pay for.

As a parent you need to know the good AND the bad to be able to make a properly informed decision. As clearly Interhigh does not deliver the dream experience you are having, for everyone, perhaps it is misleading other parents to be completely bias.

Everyone:
There are now several UK based online schools with live lessons and class interaction. If anyone has experience of these that they can share, I would be most grateful.

Beingamum

So you don’t have an objective at all with your posts? Seem like adverts to me

Mumsnet is an open forum we can all equally express our opinions on here, me included

I don’t put click links in to schools I have a financial interest as I have no vested interest other than to support people who can often be desperately seeking information

I think its really unfair to say that to schrodinger tbh, insinuating she has an agenda or paid to promote it. Shes hardly spamming people, and neither am I even though ive mentioned MOS a few times WHEN its relevent or when people have asked.

I dont use interhigh but my cousin used it with her two girls and they got on brilliantly.

Of course its not something that will work for everyone. You have to do your own research and organise trial lessons etc yourself too

Interhigh are now promoting indepedent learning from September for KS3 onwards I believe. Which means that a significant part of each subject (about 40% of the teaching time of each subject) will be taught as a lecture without any interaction as there could be up to 100 kids in the lecture or maybe less, honestly I don't know. But 40 was already too much in the trial subject this year. We were so happy there! It is a real shame. We are very worried about the new teaching project. At the moment my kid is too young to be able to concentrate with that kind of teaching (Year 9). So we are going to try another online school, which will be interactive, to see how it goes. Eager to get your views on other online schools for GCSE.

Hi
We are looking for online schooling for our school refusing dd starting gcses (or more likely igcses) in September.
We were looking at InterHigh but we're really keen to get views on other providers as well, especially if InterHigh are moving to lecture based teaching rather than interactive classes.
Any views from anyone on the other providers? Especially Wolsey Hall? Thankyou

wolsley hall doesnt have classes. Its all book based

Thanks Branleuse I realised that after posting. DD had been evangelical about it and it took me a bit of research to realise that.
We've now got a list of Netschool, InterHigh or Cambridge Home School.

And MyOnlineSchooling!

Cambridge homeschool looks very good, its all taught by people with PHDs etc and is a full time timetable i think. Its the most expensive one i think by nearly double.

The cost of Cambridge is making me nervous, if it's doubly good then I can see the justification but we are taking a financial hit with me not working full time for two years, without fees being double what we planned.

i think it depends what you mean by doubly good. You definitely get more hours, but i tend to think that the smaller classes are more intense anyway and they dont necessarily need so many hours, but different families have different requirements. My dd benefits from having more free time for other home ed activities

I think dd would definitely benefit from more time for other things and I completely agree with the small classes being more intense and more efficient for learning.
I'm finding it fascinating looking at the different offerings and realising the different markets they are aiming at.
My concerns about InterHigh are being magnified by reading about their acquisition by investors and their global plans.

interhigh also are trialling a more upmarket version too. I am not sure what its called, but i rememeber reading a bit about it here. I wonder if thats why theyre changing the format of the normal interhigh.

my dd10 and ds17 both do myonlineschooling and im quite pleased with them, im pretty sure they do free trial lessons, but that wouldnt be till september now