contact@immanuelonlineschool.com

How does the school work?

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The School Week

On the live track, we follow the British national curriculum for KS3 through to GSCE with integrated content from a Christian world view. You can have a browse of our learning portal here and view our testimonials page for student videos (a day in the life of an IOS student)

We offer three distinct tracks.

#1 IOS Live Track: This track provides students with access to the learning portal and live teaching sessions following a weekly timetable. Scroll down for more information on how it works to study with IOS on the live track. More general detailed information about the IOS track and its offerings can be found here.

#2 NSW Learning Track: This track grants access to the learning portal and selected courses. Unlike the Live Track, there are no live teaching sessions. However, students can correspond remotely with their tutor, who will mark assignments and provide guidance. Click here for fees and more information on the NSW Track.

#3 Content-Only option: This option allows access solely to course content without an associated tutor. Students opting for this track will not have a tutor guiding their studies.

IOS Live Track

At Immanuel Online School, the school week has a consistent pattern. For each subject studied, there is at least one lesson, an immediate test or assignment and a follow-up small group tutorial. We call this the LTT Learning Pattern.

We aim for educational excellence: we believe online schooling can be a remarkably effective method of delivery for a wide range of students. Our goal is not just to ensure an 'acceptable' educational environment but to provide an 'exceptional' level of teaching and learning for students.

Experience suggests traditional models and methods of classroom teaching do not transfer easily and effectively to online learning. We instead take a different approach, influenced by the concept of 'flipped learning' and the tutorial system employed in many universities.

Timetables for Year 7 - 11 (2023-2024)

Click here

Example timetable: Week in the life of an IOS student

The LTT Learning Pattern

Lesson

Direct multimedia instruction and individual study delivered through our virtual learning environment (VLE) using videos, online resources and textbooks.

Test

A short online test provides immediate feedback and tracks each student's understanding of the topic.

Tutorial

A small group tutorial class with your teacher (via video conference) focuses on application and discussion of the topic, enabling the teacher and students to thoroughly review any difficulties, ensure understanding and extend learning.

Benefits

We believe this approach is advantageous in a number of ways:

  • Attentive and personal: regular testing and small class sizes allow teachers to follow every student's progress.
  • Flexibility: small group tutorials are the only fixed appointments. We provide a recommended timetable but students can otherwise study at their own pace and, if necessary, around other activities and commitments.
  • Time efficiency: less lost time moving between classrooms and dealing with disciplinary issues plus reduced 'homework' load results in greater time for out-of-school activities, exercise and Spiritual, social and personal development.
  • No-one left behind: teachers can see clearly what students might be finding difficult or easy and have time to address these areas or recommend further extended study.

Teachers

Teachers will have expertise in their subject and will prepare all lessons, teach the tutorial groups and mark all assignments.

Extended assigment work will be set once a month for each subject to develop students' skills in essay and report writing, research, problem solving and exam technique.

Small group teaching

A special feature of Immanuel Online School is our small group tutorials. Recent experience suggests online classrooms of a typical school size or larger can struggle to maintain student engagement. Smaller classes with a maximum of 15 students allow for greater teacher and student dialogue and more time for teachers to ensure all students understand the topic being studied.

Contact

If you have any queries about the learning pattern and teaching please use the contact form or email us at the address below.

Email : contact@immanuelonlineschool.com

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an online school?

Online schools are both similar and very different to traditional institutional schools. There are lessons, tests (24/7 access to a learning portal), assignments and teaching but no physical classrooms. Students can live and learn anywhere in the world with an internet connection. We believe online schooling offers unique possibilities for Christian education in the 21st century.

In an online school, you have the freedom to manage your own timetable, unlike in a physical school where schedules are predefined and homework follows afterward. With online learning, when it's structured effectively, students can take advantage of the ample time and increased flexibility to study and make significant progress

Online schooling represents a compromise between traditional physical schooling and home education. It shares similarities with home education in that students aren't physically present for the full five days of the week. Instead, they participate in live tutorials primarily for connection, interaction, asking questions, clarifying doubts, and undergoing assessments. However, it lacks disciplinary measures commonly found in physical schools, such as detentions, placing the responsibility on parents or supervisors at home to monitor and cultivate self-motivation and independence. While online schooling complements home education, it shouldn't be considered a total substitute.

How is online schooling different to home schooling?

Students at an online school can study in any suitable location. In some countries, students may need be registered with the relevant authority as home educated. Our model of schooling in one sense blends traditional schooling with many of the advantages of home schooling. The primary difference is that lessons and tutorials are prepared and taught and assessments are marked by the school's teachers, relieving parents of the pressures of teaching and staying ahead of the curriculum.

Having said that, as mentioned above, online schooling complements home education and it shouldn't be considered a total substitute. Parents continue to play a crucial role in guiding their children's education at home.

What qualifications can students obtain?

The school prepares students for exams for International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) qualifications. These exams are usually taken at the end of the fifth year of study, i.e. by students who turn 16 during the school year. IGCSEs are internationally recognised qualifications and generally regarded as equivalent to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Social skills and mixing

While online schooling is a relatively new approach to education, multiple studies have consistently shown that home educated children (for comparison) typically develop equivalent or better social skills and social awareness than children educated in traditional institutional school settings, whose school experience is often a mixture of positive and negative social learning. At Immanuel Online School, children are not isolated and spend considerable time in small tutorial groups and with a range of teachers. Furthermore, the size of these tutorial groups reflects the real life scenario of typical teams in later working life (i.e. 8 to 15).

The school also requires all students to commit to at least one form of weekly extra-curricula social activity, to ensure they spend time with their friends and peers outside of school. Unlike many schools, the efficient approach to teaching and learning employed by Immanuel Online School does away with the need for hours of extensive, repetitive homework in the evenings and weekends, allowing greater freedom to pursue other interests and space for family time during important transitional years of life.