Parents seek back-to-school options
More parents are considering alternatives to sending their children back to school in a traditional classroom and there are growing waiting lists for such options since the province announced last week its plan to reopen schools in the fall.
There are 56 public schools and 16 independent ones that offer so-called distributed learning in B.C. This is a government-funded, home-based program that meets B.C.’S curriculum and leads to a Grade 12 diploma. There are many variations, but most combine online classes, projects and assignments completed and submitted from home and some group work with other students.
“There’s been a definite uptick in inquiries,” said Paul Tosney, educational coordinator of learner data at the Selfdesign Learning Foundation. Its kindergarten to Grade 9 program is full. “It really took off the day after the ministry made its announcement about kids being back in school.”
“We are now in a world now of COVID-19 that requires a lot of alternatives, whether that’s remote, blended or home-schooling, which is a bit different than online schooling,” said Amber Papou, CEO of Selfdesign. “Parents have a significant amount of options in B.C.”
“Things might change when individual schools give more details about their plans and parents get comfortable and happy with the idea of their kids being back in classrooms,” Tosney said, “but there has been an increase in people wanting to find out about our programs, how they work.”
Selfdesign has been offering remote, personalized, project-based learning for about 20 years, said Papou. It usually has a waiting list of about 50 people and had been expecting to enrol about 2,100 students for the next year.
The waiting list now has about 400 students, with about 250 students wanting spaces for its general kindergarten to Grade 9 program, and 150 students for its special education, K to Grade 12 program.
Selfdesign receives funding for each student from the government. It doesn’t charge tuition because it’s associated with a charity whose mission is to ensure equal accessibility, said Papou, but some other large, independent distributed learning schools do charge tuition.
There’s a range of distributed learning programs offered by public schools such as New Westminster’s blended one, Home Learners at Hume Park, which is led by teachers who work with families “who prefer to have their students educated in the home.”
The Burnaby school district runs a completely online program for kindergarten to Grade 12 in partnership with Simon Fraser University.
Early this week, it posted that it is “no longer accepting registrations for full-time kindergarten to Grade 9 and that it had a waiting list with 82 students.
Some school board online programs, such as the Vancouver school district’s Vancouver Learning Network, haven’t opened registration yet and will do so when staff return for the start of the school year.
The North Vancouver school district accepted registration applications for distributed learning until June 25 and since then, has held incoming applications in the order they are received. Some programs require meeting with a counsellor before applying.
The Ministry of Education said it officially counts enrolment in September, February and May, plus summer school numbers in July.
The most recent count was 663,224 public and independent school students in B.C. There were 23,685 students who are taking the majority of their courses through distributed learning and 2,455 other students who are homeschooled, but do not follow the curriculum set by the province.
The ministry said the Burnaby district’s website would soon be changed to indicate they will be taking pre-registrations.
Spokesperson Scott Mckenzie added in a statement that distributed learning programs are able to provide services across the province.
“Students are not limited to attending DL programs in their own school district, and many already cross-enrol in another district’s DL program.”
Another concern for some parents is that there are no elementary French immersion distributed learning programs offered by the ministry, which offers them starting in Grade 8.
The ministry pointed to other online options for elementary French immersion students offered by the Conseil Scolaire, the French-language school board for all francophone schools in B.C.