Type Secondary School School district Private Enrollment 5414 (as of 2012) Phone +1 866-679-9377 Province Ontario | Established 1995 (1995) Grades 9 to 12 Campus type Online Principal Stephen Baker Number of students 5,414 (2012) | |
Address 27 Bayfield Main St N, Bayfield, ON N0M 1G0, Canada Similar Avon Maitland District Sc, Lingen Lodge Languag, North Middlesex District Hi Profiles | ||
Virtual High School is an online high school based in Bayfield, Ontario that offers entirely online Ontario Secondary School Diploma credit courses. Stephen Baker is the founder and principal.
Contents
Academic Model
VHS is an asynchronous school allowing students to register and start on any day of the year. Students are given 18 months to complete each course and are able to work at their own pace. The courses are housed in Brightspace by D2L, an integrated learning platform developed in Waterloo, Ontario. The courses are written by certified teachers and presented entirely online. VHS holds Ontario Student Records for students who attend VHS full-time and plan to earn their Ontario Secondary School Diploma at VHS.
History
Virtual High School is the oldest online high school in Ontario.
Using Notepad, Baker constructed the first course – grade 11 biology in 1995. This course was available to the public via the Internet. In early 1996, the second course was made available – Canadian Literature. On January 2, 1997, this online school was moved to the VirtualHighSchool.com domain. The courses were organized using a rudimentary learning management system that Baker pieced together.
Baker applied to the Ontario Ministry of Education to be recognized as an accredited private school. In April 2003, VHS became an inspected private school able to grant OSSD credits with the BSID # 665681. At this time, VHS was named Kitchener-Waterloo Private School, as the idea of a virtual high school might not be readily accepted just yet.
In 2012, VHS moved its headquarters to its current location in Bayfield, Ontario. The building was originally an 1880s-era hotel that has gone through different transformations since its inception. The presence of the building goes back to 1853 but it was torn down in the 1880s and replaced by the Queen's hotel. In 1940, it was repurchased and renamed the Ritz Hotel. The rebirth into the VHS headquarters was a $2-million privately funded project that filled the building with modern computer and communication technology.
In 2012-2013, VHS's 64 courses drew 5414 students to enroll. By 2015, VHS had 71 courses.