The Managing Director of Optimi Home, Louise Schoonwinkel said the newly launched online school serves as an option to ensure safer schooling environment.
Optimi was founded in 2002, under the ownership of the Optimi Group, which is well known for catering to homeschooling. The company claims to have provided its service to over 169 000 learners since its inception.
The launch of the online school was encouraged by the company’s growing clientele base which has reportedly increased drastically over the past 18 months. Online school admissions for the new online school are officially open.
The fully catered online school has been established to provide online lessons for both English and Afrikaans speakers from grades 7 to 11. The school calendar year will be in full swing from 2022. The online school plans to expand to other grades in 2023.
While Optimi’s traditional homeschooling offering has involved parents having the option to teach their children, the online school will go further by placing children into classes led by highly qualified teachers.
Each class will include a maximum of 30 children and lessons will be delivered online. Schoonwinkel also said the classes will start at 7:30am in the morning and finish at 15:00pm.
Social engagement is important for learners, therefore smaller groups will also be formed, and there will be lunch breaks in between to recharge, Schoonwinkel added.
Not only will the school cater to the educational well-being of learners, but timetables have also been created to ensure that the mental and physical well-being of learners is addressed. The school will be providing other activities such as robotics club, fitness events and more.
In addition, the company has partnered with innovative tech startup It'sOK, which offers its users a mental health app to track the mental health of learners.
The educational progress of each student will be monitored by Optimi Learning Platform which can help identify gaps in the student learning and ensure that educational goals standards are met.
For interested parents wanting to register their children for the online school can simply visit the online website where a registration link can easily be found on the Optimi website.
According to Optimi, online school packages for Grades 7 to 9 learners will start from R2200 per month and R 2669 per month for learners in grades 10 to 11.
The online school follows the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), and a wide range of subjects will be available for students to choose from.
Schoonwinkel ensured that everything about the school is just like any other normal schooling and the only difference is that, learning will be happening online.
