Online school in Mpumalanga: what is actually available, and how to judge it

Mpumalanga is a big province with the schools bunched into a few places. Mbombela has options. eMalahleni and Middelburg have options. Outside those, a family wanting a particular subject combination, or a different pace, or simply a room where a child is not the oldest in it, runs out of road quickly.

Online schooling is now a real answer to that, and there are more providers than there were five years ago. There is also more marketing than there was five years ago. This is a guide to telling the two apart.

We are one of those providers, so read this knowing that. We have tried to write the version we would want a friend to read before phoning anybody, ourselves included.

First, the three words people mix up

Almost every confused phone call we take comes down to these being used interchangeably. They are not the same thing.

1. 1Home education. You take responsibility for the education yourself and register the child with the Mpumalanga Department of Education. You may buy a curriculum package, but the parent is the school.
2. 2Online or distance schooling. Your child is enrolled with a provider that supplies the curriculum, the teaching and the assessment. The provider is the school; you supervise.
3. 3A support centre. Your child is enrolled with an online provider and works through it alongside a tutor who closes the gaps, keeps the week honest, and prepares them for the external exams.

Nova is the third. Our students are enrolled with CambriLearn, with Study.com through My Online School, or with GED Academy, and they are assessed externally — through SACAI or at GED testing centres. We do not mark our own students' finals, and that is deliberate: what a student earns here is a judgement from a body that has never met them.

There is more on the day-to-day of the third option in what homeschooling actually looks like.

Where our students actually are

Our centre is on Church Street in Lydenburg, in the middle of Thaba Chweu. Plenty of students come in and work here full-time. But the teaching on every programme is video-based to begin with, and the live tutoring happens over Zoom — so the building is optional, and the province is not a limit.

• Thaba Chweu — Lydenburg and Mashishing, Sabie, Graskop, Ohrigstad. Our home ground, and the one place where full-time in person is easy.
• Ehlanzeni — Mbombela and Nelspruit, White River, Hazyview, Barberton, Malelane, Komatipoort, Bushbuckridge. A big district with very uneven school access once you leave the N4.
• Nkangala — eMalahleni and Witbank, Middelburg, Belfast and eMakhazeni, Machadodorp, Dullstroom, Delmas. Mining and industry, which means families who move mid-contract and children who pay for it in half-finished school years.
• Gert Sibande — Secunda, Ermelo, Bethal, Standerton, Piet Retief, Carolina, Volksrust. Long distances, small towns, and thin options past Grade 9.
• Over the boundary in either direction — Steelpoort, Burgersfort and Roossenekal towards Limpopo, and families who have moved to Gauteng but want to keep the tutor their child already trusts.

That last one comes up more often than you would think. A family relocates and the child loses the one adult in the system who understood how they learn. Over Zoom they do not have to.

The six questions worth asking any provider

Ask us these. Ask the next one too. The answers tell you more than any brochure will.

1. What qualification does my child hold at the end, and who issues it?

This is the question. Not "is it accredited", which providers answer with a yes that can mean several different things. Ask for the name of the certificate and the name of the body that issues it.

Good answers sound like: the National Senior Certificate, written through SACAI. Or: the GED, issued by GED Testing Service and evaluated by SAQA at NQF Level 4. A vague answer here is not a small problem. It is the whole problem.

2. Does it carry matric exemption?

A National Senior Certificate with a bachelor's pass opens a South African university directly. Most international routes do not, the GED included. That is not a reason to avoid them, but you need to know it before you pay rather than in Grade 12. The four working routes around it are set out in is the GED recognised in South Africa.

3. Is there a person, and when do I get them?

There is a large gap between a platform with a support inbox and a tutor who notices on the Wednesday that nothing has been done since Monday. Both get called online school. Only one of them addresses the thing that usually went wrong at the old school.

4. What happens when my child does not understand something?

Listen for the mechanism rather than the reassurance. Ours is: the lesson gets rewatched as many times as it takes, then somebody works through it with the student individually, then extra tests are set on that specific concept until it holds.

5. What is not included in the fee?

Examination fees, licence fees, textbooks, a laptop, the internet at home. Ask for the list. Our figures are on the fees page, and the whole cost picture — including the parts that are not us — is in what online school actually costs.

6. Can we start in June?

If the answer is no and your child is in trouble now, that answer costs you six months. Enrolment with us is open all year on all three programmes.

Which route suits which student

The short version. The programmes page has the long one.

• Staying on the South African curriculum, might return to a mainstream school, wants a university degree straight after school. CAPS through CambriLearn, Grade R to 12, finals written through SACAI. Nothing to explain to anybody afterwards.
• Working below their grade level, and needs to rebuild before anything else improves. My Online School, Grade 6 to 10, sitting at the level their understanding is actually at. Know upfront that it stops at Grade 10 and issues no certificate.
• Sixteen or older, out of step with their grade, needs to finish. The GED — four exams instead of seven subjects, no record of past grades needed to start, each exam written the moment the student is ready.

If you are between two of those, that is normal, and it is the conversation we have most days.

The nearest school with the right subjects is a fact of geography. It stopped being a fact of education about a decade ago.

Start with a phone call

Tell us where in the province you are, the student's age, and the last grade completed. We will tell you which programme we would put them on, roughly what it costs, and whether it makes more sense to come into Lydenburg or to work with us over Zoom.

If the honest answer is that the school down the road is doing fine by them, we will say that too.

Call or WhatsApp us. We are in Lydenburg, and on Zoom everywhere else in Mpumalanga.