South African private education group Curro has attracted over 400 learners to its online school since its launch three months ago.
The group opened Curro Online in June, in response to the impact of COVID-19 on schooling.
The COVID-19-induced national lockdown, which began in March, prompted schools like Curro to come up with various learning options, including online.
When president Cyril Ramaphosa announced measures to protect the country from the spread of COVID-19, school and university holidays were brought forward, impacting the learning schedule.
Curro says its offering is a learn-from-home model with CAPS curriculum-aligned online material created and taught by Curro teachers.
The school offers a flexible yet structured learning approach, with parents also taking on the responsibility of teaching and continuous supervision, it adds.
The success of Curro online comes as the group is battling with the prospect of parents not being able to pay fees.
Last week, the private school group presented its half-year results to June, which showed bad debt had tripled to R153 million.
CEO Andries Greyling also revealed that technology is playing an important role in preparing students for examinations.
He said 60 000 devices connect on Curro’s closed network, data used daily equalled 22 terabytes and there were 43 703 Microsoft Teams collaborations every day.
Providing ITWeb with a business update on Monday, Jay Paul, Curro Online business manager, revealed the number of students who took up the school’s online offering.
“This online offering is in line with Curro’s vision to make independent education accessible to more South African learners. All the years of funding and development of our online offering have certainly paid off, and we foresee more parents becoming open to the concept of online schooling.
“I think that COVID-19 and the lockdown period have had an impact on shifting many parents’ mindset when it comes to online education for their children.”
Further, he says, while the enrolment numbers paint a positive picture, there are still challenges with online schooling that may be slowing down uptake.
“We understand that some of the challenges to online learning include the lack of social interaction with other children of their age; however, we ensure that learners work in groups to do projects and have to collaborate online to build those skills,” says Paul.
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