Flexible schooling (known as “flexi-schooling” in short) is quickly becoming one of the most popular schooling models in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. After a year-and-a-half of attending online school, many students have acclimatised to the virtual learning model. Initially, online schooling was mandated because of the pandemic. Today, however, many students are choosing to attend online school owing to a range of reasons.
As a parent, you may have your doubts. Instead of having your children completely commit to online or conventional (in-person) school, you can choose flexible schooling to help them enjoy a healthy school-life balance, achieve academic success, enjoy continual personal growth, and reap the benefits of social development.
Flexible schooling allows children to study from home for part of the week and resume classes in a conventional school for the remaining half of the week. The schedule is entirely up to parents. After speaking with your children, you can choose the right ratio for online to conventional school. In most cases, children attend online classes for 2–3 days of the week and attend conventional school for the remaining days.
As flexible schooling gains traction across the globe, its benefits are being discussed by students, parents, teachers, academics, and education specialists. By combining face-to-face contact with interactive online lessons, flexi-schooling helps students perform and progress exceptionally well. In this blog, we’ll offer a closer look at how flexible schooling can benefit your child.
Improved Learning Outcomes
Blended learning stands out for its ability to improve academic performance across the board. Let’s understand why. No matter how prestigious and esteemed a conventional school may be, there’s a high chance that it’ll have a high student-teacher ratio.
Most conventional schools pack 20+ (sometimes even up to 30) students in one classroom. Unfortunately, this is too much to handle for even the most experienced, qualified, and committed teacher. It’s next to impossible for them to keep each student on track, identify students who are getting distracted, and keep the class focused as a whole.
Ultimately, the students suffer. They fail to absorb and retain critical concepts, which affects their ability to perform well in class. They can easily fall behind as they perform poorly on tests and struggle to keep up with the class. This scenario is extremely common in conventional schools. Since the teachers have so much on their plate, they can’t possibly offer individualised attention to every student.
This isn’t the case in online schools. By keeping the student-teacher ratio as low as possible (8–10 students in one group), Cambridge Home School makes it easier for teachers to provide one-on-one attention to every pupil. They can quickly and easily identify students who aren’t paying attention. As a result, they can reel distracted students back in and retain the focus of the entire classroom.
By combining online schooling with conventional schooling, parents can benefit from the best aspects of both. Online schooling offers individualised, focused, and streamlined learning that helps students learn better. At Cambridge Home School, our MA/PhD qualified subject specialised teachers use a well-rounded, independent, and interdisciplinary curriculum that further helps students gain an academic edge. At the same time, conventional schooling offers a change of pace and space. As students have face-to-face interactions with their teachers, they are able to have a varied learning experience.
Many parents help their children switch to flexible schooling with the intention of making a more permanent switch to online schooling in the long run. This is the most favourable approach as online schooling delivers better learning outcomes than conventional schooling. Students are more focused, attentive, and retentive, owing to the low student-teacher ratio. The risk of school bullying, harassment, and abuse is also eliminated as teachers assiduously moderate the classroom. Every student-to-student interaction occurs before them.
In conventional classrooms, teachers are unable to pick up on underhanded remarks and retorts among students as there’s a significant distance between students and teachers. In many cases, teachers completely fail to recognise instances of bullying, harassment, and abuse.
In online schools, teachers are aware of everything, which helps them intervene and protect students who could easily be picked on if the circumstances were different. This also plays a big role in helping students learn more confidently, contentedly, and effectively. They’re not worried about being picked on.
By creating a wholesome online learning environment, online teachers ensure that each student is accepting of their peers, treats them with respect, and values their opinions. Collectively, these factors improve learning outcomes. Since flexible schooling includes online classes, children are able to reap these benefits. They secure excellent grades, retain knowledge in the long run, and become successful and consistent achievers.
Flexible Scheduling
As its name entails, flexible schooling stands out for offering ample flexibility to students. As rigid, archaic learning models get replaced with flexible, balanced, and student-centric education systems, flexibility is being prioritised across the board.
Today, students are strongly being encouraged to adopt a healthy school-life balance that doesn’t leave them feeling overwhelmed, overworked, fatigued, and burned out. This doesn’t mean that academic performance is being sidelined. It simply means that student mental health is also being taken into consideration owing to the increase in school-related struggles and pressures being faced by students.
Children as young as 8 can fall victim to academic anxiety and stress. As they’re flooded with knowledge that they cannot sufficiently grasp, they may fall behind, especially if they require more academic support than their peers. An individualised, empathetic teaching approach is imperative. However, balanced scheduling is also extremely important. If students are made to study, revise, and complete their homework for the bulk of the day, their day-to-day life can be affected.
An excessive focus on academics leaves students with little to no time for exploring new interests and hobbies, socialising with friends, playing skill-building games, going on excursions and adventures with friends and family, exploring artistic pursuits, playing sports, and becoming well-rounded individuals. They feel too drained to enjoy non-academic activities. Instead of helping students secure better grades, this approach negatively affects their academic growth. Students feel discontent, tired, and frustrated, which shows in their grades.
Flexible schooling leaves students with ample room to enjoy a healthier school-life balance, which, in turn, improves their grades. Since students aren’t required to attend conventional school every day, they don’t return home feeling wiped out. More often than not, conventional schooling has this effect on students. As they shuffle in and out of classrooms and attend protracted, unfocused lessons, their energy and concentration levels significantly drop. This risk is eliminated in online schools and reduced with the flexible schooling model. Students are more focused, attentive, and alert.
Holistic Growth
As a parent, you shouldn’t just focus on academic growth or any other singular aspect of your child’s upbringing. Many parents solely fixate on sporting performance, while others exclusively double down on creative development. Ultimately, all of these facets are equally important. Instead of fixating on one or the other, incorporate each element into your child’s learning journey. They should become curious, critical, and confident learners.
Flexible schooling promotes holistic growth in students, helping them excel in different aspects of their life. Earlier this year, Emma Raducanu claimed the US Open championship title at the age of 18. However, this wasn’t all. Emma had also received her A Levels results shortly after playing Wimbledon the same year. She secured an A* in Maths and an A in Economics.
This is the definition of holistic growth, which is facilitated through flexible schooling. Students don’t face the harsh pressures of conventional schooling. This is one of the biggest reasons why most young sports stars, Chess players, Scrabble players, Spelling Bee participants, and other young talented individuals are homeschooled.
It’s important to note that flexible schooling combines homeschooling and face-to-face learning. Children are essentially homeschooled for certain days of the week. The only difference is that parents aren’t required to intervene at any point.
At Cambridge Home School, we provide extensive training to our experienced MA/PhD qualified subject specialist teachers. Combined with their own expertise, skills, and insights, our training helps them focus on more than just academic growth in students. Our teachers also build a wide range of soft and hard skills in each student, especially in younger children who are in an active learning stage.
Flexible schooling will help your child become a well-rounded individual with a vast range of skills, varied interests, and remarkable accomplishments. Your child will be exposed to two different modes of learning, which will improve their learning capabilities.
Interest in Learning and Growing
While parents have a strong interest in their children’s growth and development, they seldom wonder whether their children share the same interest. As a parent, you should take an interest in your child’s learning process. However, your child will struggle to perform well if you care about their growth but they aren’t bothered at all.
Students who don’t have a genuine interest in their own learning process and growth perform poorly. If they’re forced by their parents to perform better but are unable to develop the willingness to do it, they will consistently underperform in class and on their examinations. This can take a toll on their academic progression. As they progress from one academic stage to another, they may lack the foundation that is needed to help them perform as well as their peers and stay on track.
Flexible schooling helps students develop a genuine interest in self-enrichment across several categories: academic, personal, social, athletic, and the like. Since they enjoy more time off on the days that they attend online school, there’s more room for self-introspection and character building.
At Cambridge Home School, we have a strong focus on thoughtful self-cultivation. Our students are encouraged to explore their interests and understand how their contributions can benefit themselves and others. Students are taught the value of developing a strong interest in self-growth, so much so that they feel excited about their homework, the sports they play, the skill-building activities they are involved in, and so on.
As far as online classes are concerned, our teachers go the extra mile to make them interactive, engaging, stimulating, and retentive. When combined with conventional (in-person) classes, online classes help students retain an excellent academic balance.
If you’re considering switching to flexible schooling for your child, start by understanding the unique benefits of homeschooling and conventional schooling. As you get a good grasp on their singular benefits, you’ll understand which schooling system is well-suited for your child. Based on these insights, you can carefully select the right ratio of online to conventional school.
For instance, if your child performs better as a virtual learner, allocate 3–4 days of the week to online school and the remaining 1–2 to conventional school. If it’s the opposite, flip this ratio. Speak with your child and understand their learning persona so you can select the right flexi-schooling pace for them. This isn’t a rigid schedule that will be set in stone; you can always make changes as your child develops new learning habits and evolves as a student. However, the right beginning will make the process more enjoyable and exciting for them.
At Cambridge Home School, we provide a quality online education to students across four homeschooling programs: Primary Prep/Key Stage 2 (ages 8 to 10), Lower School/Key Stage 3 (ages 11 to 13), Upper School/IGCSEs (ages 14 to 16), and Sixth Form/AS & A-Levels (ages 17 to 19). Students living in the UK, Europe (including Western Russia), Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia are strongly encouraged to apply. Our classes can also be attended as part of the flexi-schooling system. We recommend reaching out to our education specialists for more insight.
At Cambridge Home School, we focus on helping our students secure top grades and enjoy good mental health. We provide one-on-one success coaching and pastoral support to each student. In addition, we provide a vast online library replete with top-notch educational resources like study guides, presentations, videos, past papers, concept analyses, and so much more.
Take a closer look at our homeschooling programs to understand whether we’re the right fit for your child. You can also explore the following resources:
- Admissions Process
- Term Dates
- Application Form
- Scholarships & Bursaries
- Grades & Fees
- Online Reviews
We’re excited to have you on board!
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FAQ
What is Flexible Schooling?
Flexible schooling, also known as “flexi-schooling,” is a hybrid educational model that combines online and conventional in-person schooling. It allows parents and students to choose the number of days spent in a traditional school setting versus an online environment. This approach is designed to offer benefits like a balanced school-life experience and improved academic outcomes.
How Does Flexible Schooling Impact Academic Performance?
This model leverages the best aspects of both online and in-person learning to help students excel academically. In the online setting, smaller student-teacher ratios permit individualised attention, improving focus and retention. Meanwhile, conventional schooling provides the social interaction and change of environment that complements the online experience. This combination generally leads to better academic performance.
Can Flexible Schooling Help in Holistic Development?
Yes, flexible schooling promotes all-around growth, allowing students to excel in academics while also pursuing other interests such as sports or arts. The model provides sufficient time and flexibility for students to become well-rounded individuals.
What Role Does Flexible Scheduling Play?
The flexible nature of this schooling system means that students aren’t confined to a rigid academic schedule, thus promoting a healthier school-life balance. This ensures students do not feel overwhelmed and can engage in extracurricular activities, improving not just their grades but also their mental well-being.
How Do I Choose the Right Flexi-schooling Ratio for My Child?
Speak with your child to understand their learning preferences and needs. Based on this, you can allocate the number of days for online and conventional schooling. This schedule is not fixed and can be adjusted as your child’s learning habits evolve.