*This content is brought to you by Valenture Institute
What if you could take the best of traditional schools (sport, sense of community, the student body, and decade-old traditions) and ‘upgrade’ it to include cutting-edge learning technologies and the flexibility to study from anywhere (even bed!), while being supported by mentors and expert teachers daily?
To evolve traditions is to inspire new ones, and it’s about time schools evolved beyond its walls.
Recently, St Stithians College announced that it will be launching an 8th school – the St Stithians Online School* in collaboration with global online private high school, Valenture Institute.
This prestigious South African private school chose now as the time to act to expand and upgrade its core offering. “Our online teaching experience (during lockdown) has given us exposure to both the challenges and affordances of the online learning environment, and it is off the back of this experience that we have decided to launch a purpose built online school,” says Celeste Gilardi, Rector of St Stithians College.
The vision? To combine the best of Valenture’s experience delivering high-quality online education to students around the world, with St Stithians College’s rich history, Methodist ethos, and track record of academic excellence in order to inspire new traditions for brick and mortar schools. Traditions that’ll see the school evolve its educational experience by broadening access for future generations of St Stithians students in a rapidly changing world, without losing their culture as a school.
It’s about thinking differently, about seeing the opportunities it can create for students, instead of what online schooling might subtract in terms of the holistic development of a student.
We recently saw Valenture Institute launch its Boutique Campuses, a progressive learning environment where students learn online, but attend campus by day where they are assisted by mentors and have access to exclusive features and facilities. Their collaboration with St Stithians inverts this learning model to offer this ‘traditional’ school the best of both worlds.
This means students will be able to complete all of their academics online in a high quality, engaging online learning environment where they’ll be supported by dedicated mentors and incredible teachers, while still being able to belong to the student body (Saints all the way) and participate in sports and other activities on the College’s beautiful campus.
Fun. Check. Tradition. Check. Ethos. Check.
- St Stithians Online School will welcome its first cohort in January 2021 – admissions for this intake will be open from the middle of November 2020. The school offers an International British curriculum to students from grade 8, and fees will start at R85, 000 per annum. For more information visit ststithiansonlineschool.com.
