In the UK in 2019 almost 60,000 pupils were home-schooled every year and in 2023 Local Authority estimates were more than doubled at 126,000. Home schooling used to mean parents being the teachers. But increasingly parents are moving away from being the educational providers and are looking towards an online solution and well, this is how we started.
A family was travelling overseas and wanted to combine home tuition, a relaxed family life with a lot of outdoors activities. They also wanted their children to become more independent and so with three early secondary-aged children our online school started offering full-time schooling in 2019. Using the expertise gleaned over many years of finding great teachers and putting together engaging yet comprehensive academic programmes we delivered our first programme on our virtual school platform. We now offer the full English curriculum to students from primary year 2 to A-Levels. One parent, Tom in Spain, describes how it works for his three children:
“Online Schooling with Wendover has removed so much stress from our day. We don’t have to rush around getting our three kids to school; they are never tired as the school day is a shorter one and they have plenty of time to do their homework (and they love doing it!) …… Family life no longer revolves around school, school fits in with where and how we want to live.”