Crimson planning online school
A private tutoring company has hired former Prime Minister Sir John Key for its board and unveiled ambitious plans for a global online high school.
Key will follow his son Max Key into Crimson Consulting, where Max worked from 2015 until 2017 helping students get into top American universities through excellence in sports.
Company founder Jamie Beaton, 24, said Key would be an “advisory member” of the company’s board.
Beaton has also announced the company will start a “highly selective” online Crimson Global Academy in February, targeting several hundred students studying towards
Cambridge exams, NZ Scholarships or entry tests for American universities.
Former Auckland Grammar headmaster John Morris, 69, will be executive principal and the school is advertising for a principal and about 100 teachers of English, Mandarin, Spanish, maths, biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, business, economics, law, history, sociology and psychology.
It was registered by the Ministry of Education in August as a private school and Morris said teachers would need New Zealand registration, but would be able to work from anywhere.
“They could be working from home,” he said. “It’s not like Te Kura [the Correspondence School], which has no direct teaching. This will be teachers teaching interactively online. Students will log on from anywhere.”
Beaton said Crimson was investing more than $10 million into the new school out of $31.5m of new capital it raised last month, which brought the company’s total value to US$260m ($410m).
Students will pay between $2000 and $5000 per subject, or $15,000 to $20,000 for a full course-load, putting the fees in the same range as other private schools.