Kerikeri student Jade Sceats, 17, made the switch to online schooling through Crimson Global Academy and has no regrets.
Online learning was thrust upon students around the country during the Covid lockdowns but now an increasing number of Kiwi kids are opting to do so.
One principal says it’s “the beginning of a big change in education”.
Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, formerly The Correspondence School, has seen enrolment numbers rise by more than 7000 students to 28,355 between 2018 and last year - with growth of more than 5000 in the past two years - and now provides almost all of its learning and teaching online.
Crimson Global Academy, founded and run by New Zealand’s Jamie Beaton, has been offering online learning worldwide since 2019 but between 2020 and 2022 saw an increase from 12 to 128 Kiwi students.
Last year Mt Hobson Academy went fully online with 56 students. This year it has almost 200, including 80 from a small Kaitaia school that closed down.
Amana Christian School in Mosgiel started offering distance learning last year and student numbers jumped from about 20 to 78. This year the school has about 70 students enrolled with fewer than 20 of those on-site.
All of those providers credit the growth in interest to Covid and believe even more families would take up the opportunity if they could afford the private school fees that came with the style of education.
“I think Covid was the catalyst for it, but I think parents are finally seeing what we have been concerned about for a few years,” Amana principal Roslyn King said.
“I guess they got to see a bit more of what their children were learning and how they were doing.”
Mt Hobson Academy principal Saira Boyle agreed.
“Parents really got to see what happens in the classroom. For a lot of parents, it opened up the knowledge around what teaching and learning looks like but also where their child sits.”
She said parents had noticed their children’s anxiety was lower and engagement was higher when learning from home.
“I think there are a whole group of parents and students who have seen there is another way.”
Te Kura chief executive Te Rina Leonard said the largest growth for Te Kura had come through Ministry of Education referrals of non-enrolled students - those under 16 who had not attended school for at least 20 consecutive days - and believed online learning removed some of the reasons they had become disengaged.
“It’s tough for a lot of young people to be present in school,” she said, citing bullying, mental health and responsibilities outside of school as reasons students were referred to Te Kura.
Learning online at home was also a benefit for some neuro-diverse learners who struggled with the noise and stimulus of a classroom, Boyle said.
“The brain works in such a way that if the brain feels safe, it will engage with learning. For some children, there’s just so much stimulus at school that the brain is on high alert and therefore learning can’t take place.”
Some signed up for online learning because of their remote location while others wanted to sit international exams in the hope of getting into prestigious universities, Beaton said.
The other advantage was access to world-class teachers, he said.
“A big challenge in New Zealand physical schools is that they can recruit only teachers who physically live near the school, which is a huge constraint for a lot of subjects, particularly in areas like mathematics, artificial intelligence, languages and computer science.
“In our case, we’re able to source brilliant teachers from all over the world.”
Victoria University online learning specialist Dr Anne Yates said other benefits included the time efficiency in not having to travel, the flexibility and the lack of distractions.
Alex MacCreadie. executive director of school strategy at Open Polytechnic/Te Pūkenga said it also gave students more control over the pace of their learning allowing them more time to spend on concepts they found difficult while skipping quickly over ideas they grasped easily.
But, the biggest concern for most parents and students was the potential to feel isolated, lack friends and fail to learn social skills.
Each provider did their best to minimise the issue by organising physical get-togethers, camps and online activities like baking, Lego lunches and homework clubs as well as encouraging students to join local clubs.
“We meet regularly for camp and watching the friendships blossom and come to fruition when they then catch up in person tells me first-hand that you can actually make a strong relationship online,” Boyle said.
Students were also proactive about connecting with their peers regularly through social media and other online platforms, Beaton said.
Boyle said online schooling encouraged students to be more independent, organised and motivated to get their work done.
MacCreadie said when the programmes were well-balanced and inspiring, motivation was not an issue for students.
A lot of responsibility fell on parents, who often did not have expertise in every subject, meaning they struggled to support their children’s learning, he said.
Screen time was another concern for parents.
Amana and 3H limited on-screen classes to 30-45 minutes at a time followed by independent work.
At Mt Hobson Academy students were in an online class for most of the day, even if they were working quietly on something.
But, Boyle said parents shouldn’t think of it as screen time because it was active learning.
“It’s not mindless scrolling, it’s not mindless googling or playing on a game that’s going to give you a false dopamine hit and then get you hooked in. That’s screen time,” she said.
“This is a portal into a classroom where you’re interacting with other human beings.”
“I believe we’re at the beginning of a big change in education and I think we’ve just got to be patient and then more and more people will be able to see what it can provide for our kids,” Boyle said.
3H International School trustee James Bellingham said he believed more and more online options would pop up in New Zealand in the next couple of years that would allow students to live anywhere and still get a good quality education.
But, the biggest barrier was the cost.
Boyle, Bellingham and MacCreadie had all talked to families who were interested but unable to afford the private schooling fees associated with every online provider except Te Kura.
Legislation meant there could only be one state-funded distance provider so accessing more government funding was off the cards.
MacCreadie and Yates both believed there would be no mass shift, rather physical schools would start to incorporate more technology and online options.
“My personal opinion is that most students like going to an actual school – they like interacting with other students and the teachers, they like all the activities schools provide like sport and music,” Yates said.
Kerikeri teen Jade Sceats has no regrets about moving to online schooling.
“I was wanting to push myself a bit more academically. At my local school, I felt quite unchallenged because it’s so big and the teachers couldn’t really go out the way for us like that,” the 17-year-old said.
When Covid hit in 2020 she realised that was her chance to try out online learning part-time.
She enjoyed it so much that she made the move to Crimson Global Academy full-time.
Jade said concerns about socialising were unfounded.
She had made friends with classmates using online platforms, met up with other Crimson students in Auckland and met up with local friends.
“Honestly, I found that I have almost more time to socialise now because I’m able to learn a lot more efficiently. I’m not spending all my time outside of school constantly trying to self-study other subjects.”
She admitted the transition was hard at first because the learning was more intense and it took time to adjust to the online environment.
“At first I don’t think I handled it very well. It required more effort on my part to make sure I was still going out and socialising and getting involved in my community but I think I was still able to find balance,” Jade said.
“I know, some students can struggle with it being online because it does require a certain degree of motivation but if you want to be there, you can make it work.”
She is now applying for universities around the world and dreams of being accepted into the electronic and information engineering course at Imperial College London.
“It’s really cool to get that kind of international community and also have access to more international opportunities.”
Amy Wiggins is an Auckland-based reporter who covers education. She joined the Herald in 2017 and has worked as a journalist for 12 years.
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