Hi anotherglass:
I can see that you have your doubts about e-learning. I suspect that you have cause.
I'm not trying to persuade you to change your mind, but I thought it might help you if you could hear of an example where e-learning surprasses actual living human beings.
My DD1 is lovely, but is easily distracted and often loses her train of thought, which is a hindrance when learning new and complicated things, like subtracting. By Easter Y2 she was unable to even take 1 from 10. She just didn't get it. There was the usual asking the teacher (not particularly helpful sort or friendly, so that didn't go well). Raising it with the Head (helpfully gave us the national curriculum - not completely sure how that helps). Having more meetings - this time with SENCO - DD1 doesn't have learning difficulties, but what we need to understand is that she's just not that bright.
So we were left to it. The school gave no suggestions, didn't put in place any extra work or support and weren't interested in recommending workbooks or mathsbooks to us to help her at home.
We were in complete dispair when a chance article in a magazine about Carol Vorderman lead me to Mathsfactor - www.themathsfactor.com.
Now this e-tutorial has its fans and it opponents. I'm not saying it is all things to all people. However, for us it was a miracle. We started with lessons 5 x a week in April 2009 and slowly but surely 11,880 sums later and 1 1/2 years later my struggling little girl is now flying high. She's moved right up the ranks to top set in maths at school. Her mental maths are astounding - she easily beats her father at two digit sums (e.g. 23 + 55 or 84 - 27). She's learned her times tables to x12 (whereas the school stops at x10). She's learned column addition/ subtraction to 3 digits (her school will not do this until Y5). She's really taken to it and it has made such a difference.
The school clearly don't approve of our approach, but then I suppose our attitude shocks them. We've openly told them what DD1 learns in school is only supplmenting, and frankly usually reviewing, what we're doing at home. I'm certain this is very offensive, but then if 'highly trained professionals' dump parents with a child who is struggling and get huffy when resourceful parents go and find something that does work themselves - Hard Cheese!
I don't suppose it is for everyone. But anotherglass, don't go throwing the baby out with the bathwater. An excellent teacher is irreplaceable - they can inspire and broaden horizons - but a mediocre and disorganised teacher (which are pretty common at my DDs' school) can inch by inch cost valuable time and learning opportunities.
I suppose the starkest example I can give is that at present at a school 1 mile away, their Y4 is learning long division and square roots right now. My DDs class is working on ranking fractions by size (1/2 is bigger than 2/6th) and 2/3rds of her class have yet to master their times tables to x10 (they don't teach to x12). My understanding is that long division won't happen at my DDs school until Y6. Our DDs school isn't bad - it's rated GOOD by OFSTED, but it does seem to have issues with routines and homework. I'd say that my DDs class is roughly 6 months to a year behind other Y4 classes I know of, through friends' children. And I believe that gap is expanding, largely because the school really doesn't like setting homework outside reading 20 minutes a day. It's that gradual loss of opportunity that I find irritating. E-learning has ensured that at least in my DDs case she has that opportunity at practice and won't lose out so badly as to be unable to access higher level maths and science come Senior School.
Perhaps as an older parent (well past 40), my expectations are out of line with today's younger parents - but all I want is for my child to be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide with confidence by the end of primary. It was clear the school didn't share that view, so we went our own way with e-learning for maths and have never looked back.