Virtual Academy Dazzles Ofsted

School conducted down the barrel of a webcam. Educational traditionalists might raise their eyebrows at the notion, reminded of the darkest days of the Covid pandemic or else the omniscient telescreen of George Orwell’s 1984. However, the truth of the matter is nothing so sinister – indeed, quite the opposite, as the ‘glowing’ Ofsted accreditation of Minerva’s Virtual Academy demonstrates. One of the first of its kind for an online school, the report heaps praise upon the academy: Minerva has ‘achieved their aim of replicating the best aspects of a traditional, physical school in an online environment’.

Minerva’s Virtual Academy is an online independent school founded in November 2020 by scholar and entrepreneur Hugh Viney – in just four years it has grown to an institution of over 800 students from 48 different nations, a remarkable achievement in its own right.

But what the Ofsted accreditation really highlights is that MVA is emphatically not an inferior substitute for a more traditional education. Indeed, both parents and the Department for Education echo the same sentiment: MVA is ‘giving children their future back’. Roughly 40 per cent of the school’s student body initially applied due to struggles with mental health – specifically anxiety. Ofsted reports that ‘pupils talk extremely positively about Minerva’s Academy … Many pupils [said] attending … improved their mental health’. To founder Viney’s mind, the Ofsted report makes the truth more evident than ever: ‘online schooling [is] a viable, government-endorsed path for the growing minority of young people for whom mainstream school simply isn’t suitable’.

The full Ofsted report can be read at minervavirtual.com/about/ofsted-accreditation-report.