Minerva online academy?

[Yetanothernamechange123]

Any experience anyone? Or of any other online schools - for current Year 9. Fairly academic, but not enjoying school. At all.

Anyone?x

I too am looking for feedback on online schools, Minerva, King's Inter High, Wolsey Hall?

Hi - I'm deciding between Minerva and Kings Interhigh. Have you any experience of either? It's for my daughter.

Hi, my son's been at Minvera Virtual Academy since September, and is loving it. He's out of mainstream for medical reasons (has ME/CFS). The do 'flipped learning' as in some independent schools. There are only activities to complete both before and after each lesson. The quality of the learning platform and lessons are all excellent. There is strong pastoral support, good clubs and a hang-out zone where they make friends. He's gone from being out of school, depressed and lonely to absolutely enjoying life and education again. The fact that we are close to London and he has met up with his peers on school trips has been the icing on the cake. All the online schools are a bit different in feel. We were impressed by them all to be honest. Most do free trial lessons and a chat. Good luck with your search. Even though he was mainly too ill to attend, we had real qualms about taking him out of physical school, but so glad we did.

Hi, what is the teaching interface like at Minerva? At Interhigh the communication seems mostly to be through the chat box, but I would like to find an online school where the cameras are more likely to be on and students can see and chat with each other.

Hi, I'm sorry but my experience of Minerva has not been a positive one. The teaching interface is that the children teach themselves most of the time through watching videos via youtube, and only have a face to face lesson with a real teacher once or twice a week. The headmaster is only interested in any sort of discussions, if it suits him.

We are just about to enrol our Y9 daughter at Minerva. She’s been unhappy and struggled at school for years on and off so we are going to give it a go. She wants to go to a performing arts school in Y10 (and we are really hoping she gets in) so in theory this is to tide her over until then. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I know someone that teaches for them. She came from mainstream education management level and wanted to move away from that relentless pace. She speaks highly of Minerva and it does sound like they have really stepped things up over the last year. I guess the tricky thing is you can't judge outcomes as ultimately the students all do their national exams as private entrants so I'm not sure how much evidence the school have about their 'success'. What I pick up is that they do care about students, have pastoral meetings and mentoring with their remote students and are planning and checking on the quality of teaching. They do have a number of very bright students who for various reasons aren't in mainstream.

Hi there, thanks for posting. Just wondering how it’s going for your child.

hi how’s the online schools. Any feedback appreciated.

It’s going ok. The teachers are good, the homework is varied and sometimes fun. If you have a child who struggles to pay attention, you might have a problem with the online lessons. My daughter’s mentor is wonderful - she has half an hour a week with her and she is kind and supportive and interested. The major downside is boredom and loneliness. My daughter thought her old school friends would stay in touch but they haven’t (out of sight, out of mind). Fortunately she does a lot of dance but even so she has been a bit lonely. I’ve just had parents evening and the feedback on how she is doing was pretty good.

Hi @Binty31 thanks so much for sharing your experience of Minerva. Great to hear your child has settled in and enjoys int education again. I wondered if you knew whether it’s essential to deregister your child before joining Minerva? My son hasn’t been happy for the whole of Year 7 at 2 different schools but I’d like him to trial online schooling for a term before I completely take him out of mainstream. Thanks

We enrolled our child with Minerva, pre sales made it sound like it would be great and she would get support to catchup and also SEN help. Also that they would help get it paid for by your local authority. You will never hear from this person again. Reality is the system is very confusing to use and after we paid there was no reach out to us to help. The SEN team were good when we introduced them to our child’s existing school but made zero effort outside of that (which was really an attempt to gain funding). The mentor seemed really poor. Responsiveness when you want to terminate is top notch though, reach out within minutes to point out that you should have given notice before your child was even signed up. If you do it then like state schools you will have to push to get what your child needs out of it and make sure to keep on top of termination if it’s not working out.

Oh and in terms of catchup, don’t believe the sales hype. Are there online lessons yes. Is there any interest or support in you following these and doing the assigned work - nope, teachers too busy to mark what your actually doing.

We love Highgrove Education. Everything from the initial enquiries through to access to teachers and treating Pip an individual has been fantastic. Wish I’d done it sooner. https://highgroveeducation.com