A collaboration between
The Virtual High School is a fully digital school of mastery built specifically for South African students to support educational outcomes, learning accessibility and personalization through technology. Led by Head of School, Professor Percy Sepeng and IDEA’s CEO Dr Corrin Varady, the Virtual High School is South Africa’s first wholly asynchronous Virtual School made to ensure all students, from all backgrounds, can access affordable and self-directed flexible education.
Is VHS just another online school?
The Virtual High School is a fully digital school of mastery built specifically for South African students to support educational outcomes, learning accessibility and personalization through technology. Led by Head of School, Professor Percy Sepeng and IDEA’s CEO Dr Corrin Varady, the Virtual High School is South Africa’s first wholly asynchronous Virtual School made to ensure all students, from all backgrounds, can access affordable and self-directed flexible education.
Is it only available to a privileged and limited student population?
At less than a third of the cost of the nearest online schools in the market, the VHS is purposefully not only providing for privileged students. It is providing for ALL students. With 80% of the virtual school driven by simulations, interactive activities and engaging gamified virtual science experiments, the school is underpinned by the award-winning IDEA Digital Education group, in partnership with the national Department of Basic Education and Ntiyiso Consulting. The work of IDEA is to ensure that digital learning is accessible whether that is device and/or connectivity flexibility, supporting public sector’s most at-risk students or ensuring that students who need reinforced learning can get the support and resources they need to see achievement.
What do students get when registering with VHS?
The Virtual High School is fully accredited and registered school to provide authorised assessments and grade certifications with both within national, provincial and the home school regulations as well as certified by the South African Comprehensive Assessment Institute. This means the virtual school can deliver the national syllabus and assess students for upgrade students, monitoring their mastery and not just their pass rates. Although we are only registering Grade 8-11 in 2023, VHS is preapproved to provide matriculation and will be expanding to Grades 7-12 in 2024. Promoting STEM education with elective streams in digital technology and economic subjects, the cohort are fully recognized in the basic education system and have the skills to prepare them for the 4th Industrial Revolution and a rapidly globalising digital economy.
What is the vision of the virtual school?
The impact of this school is significant. It means we can lift standards to those historically unable to access private-school quality education while redefining what it means to be a South African student in 2023 who want the opportunity to go on to vocational or tertiary education. Why shouldn’t quality education be truly democratised? The digital curriculum that serves all the subjects in the virtual school is not new or conceptual. Under IDEA’s eight years of delivery, the digital subjects have received global awards such as the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s “Best Innovation for Government in response to COVID-19”, the Global Education Start Up Award for Africa, Third place in the UK Government’s Best Digital Learning Platform Award closely behind Google and The Times. The Virtual School is a Microsoft Education Partner and delivered on Azure across the country.