Saved by online school

Today is a momentous day because we deregistered our son from his physical school, we’re committed to online schooling now!

At the beginning of September I posted that my son was due to start online school (Minerva’s Virtual Academy) because he had started refusing to go to school in June.

My son is settling in at online school. He is much happier than when we were trying to get him into physical school. He is building up his confidence, and online working skills, as well as getting the education he would have got in his physical school. We’re more engaged in his learning than we were when he was in physical school.

Online school is very much like the world of work, my son has meetings (lessons) online with participants who may be in other countries (one teacher is Italy, another in Spain). The students are spread around the UK and beyond. The students don’t like having their cameras on in lessons and hate breakout rooms (so much like the adult world!). Work is managed using a teaching management system which reminds me of Jira. All the teachers are addressed by their first names. Students can wear want they want.

The Minerva parent discussion forum is a real eye-opener. When you have a child refusing school you feel alone, stressed, heartbroken by the distress of your child and inadequate for failing in this simple task but here is a community just like you. Many parents have children who have been refusing school for years. Some are signed off work because of stress, others have given up work or changed work dramatically to support their children. We are exceedingly grateful for online school, many parents talk about “getting their child back”. We share our frustrations at battling the education system, which is byzantine and stressful in itself. I wish this support community had been available at the start of the process.

In a sense we are the lucky ones, we have the privilege of being able to pay for private schooling (https://www.minervavirtual.com/admissions/fees), and to be able to support our child at home full-time, both academically and just by being there. Online school works for our children, for some children it won’t.

The path to deregistration has been a bit stressful. As this term started we enrolled with Minerva, hoping to use it as a breathing space to get our son back into physical school.

This failed fast for systematic reasons which we did not appreciate at the time. Fundamentally the problem was that the school was prioritising attendance over our son’s education and welfare. This was a rather shocking revelation but it makes understanding what was going on much easier. It is inevitable because attendance can be measured easily, and schools are judged upon it. This is beyond the school’s control, as far as I can tell. If our son had a diagnosis for autism or similar then it might have been easier to navigate the path – then absences would have been “authorised” but he didn’t – school refusal set on quickly for him. The diagnosis process, and the subsequent planning for accommodations, can take years to establish and are hard to navigate.

Our early decision to enrol in an online school, perversely, seems to have been a bad move as far as the system was concerned. It took the pressure off us to get our son back to school, for us this was great, for the school not so much. Throughout the physical school were at least indifferent to our online school, and to be honest outright hostile. As it is we are now considered “elective home education”.

I have been radicalised by this experience, there are days on which I see the physical school as the enemy. The school system is broken and fails a whole bunch of children who just can’t cope with the physical school environment, which in no way reflects the wider world. Online schools seem to work really well for many of these students, and it’s a pity they are not part of the state system.

I can’t help thinking that the COVID lockdowns had two effects that impact on this. One was on the mental health and socialisation of children themselves but the other was to show to both parents and children that there was an alternative to physical school attendance.

I’m sorry my son is leaving his physical school, he liked his teachers, they liked him and he did really well academically. He made some good friends there. Whilst we were trying to get him back in June and July the support staff at the school were brilliant.

Psychologically it is hard leaving behind schooling in-person, you are going down the path less travelled, and less accepted by society. Despite a recent Department of Education accreditation scheme, online schools are not considered schools by the education system.

As a family we are off on an adventure!