Dear Parents and Guardians,
Greetings from the management of Ray Jacobs Boarding School. We pray and hope we were all able to safely weather the tremendous challenges the nation faced during this coronavirus pandemic. While it appears the nation is slowly getting the epidemic under control, we urge you to follow health guidelines in ensuring the safety of your families.
In the absence of approval from the Federal and State governments to resume school, the school has decided to resume classes online on September 28 2020 and will run till December 18 2020.
The school is evolving her curriculum to match the present realities. A committee comprising of academic and management staff has since begun re-engineering the school curriculum to ensure all students receive quality education, while maintaining the health safety of the students and staff. To achieve this, the school has created two parallel curriculums, one in-person and the other fully online.
The in-person curriculum maintains our traditional methods of teaching, and will be applied to students when government gives approval to resume school. However, some subjects while in school, will be taught online. The second option is the fully online curriculum which will allow students learn from home by logging into the school’s online portal to obtain lesson materials, watch lesson videos, have live video conferences with teachers and perform Computer Based Tests and homework. Online learning will allow us to recruit the best teachers from around the world, to ensure our students get the best quality education.
The online learning system works by:
• Lessons will be pre-recorded on video with our teachers teaching as they traditionally would in the classroom, with a white board and other teaching materials. These videoed lessons will be broken down into small subtopics in short videos, and students will be required to login on their computers to watch the videos.
• After the videos, students are made to answer a short quiz to ensure they were following what is being taught. This ensures they follow the lesson, even without supervision.
• Topics under each class subject are arranged sequentially and access to materials for each topic is only made available after the teacher is satisfied that the student has fully understood the preceding topic.
• Once a week, students have the option of logging into a live video conference session with their subject teacher. This avails them the opportunity to ask questions about the materials covered online and allows the teachers monitor the progress of their students.
• Computer Based Tests will be given intermittently, and homework will be given and students required to upload online.
• Lesson notes and other subject materials are made available to students on the online portal to download and read at anytime
While building the school online portal, checks and balances were applied to guarantee that students’ progress are monitored and to ensure no student is left behind. The entire system and curriculum has been painstakingly crafted to ensure the success of the students using it.
Therefore, henceforth the school requires students (both in-school and online) to own and maintain a laptop computer. When school resumes in-person after government’s approval, students will be required to return to school with their computers. All laptops must run on Windows 10 or newer, have a minimum RAM of 2GB and a minimum hard drive capacity of 128 GB. Mobile wi-fi devices will not be allowed back to school, as the school will be providing internet over wi-fi. This will allow the school control which websites the students visit. Our internet has been configured to allow students visit a list of selected websites only.
Students are required to pay One hundred and thirty five thousand naira (N135,000) for the online classes. When the federal and state governments give approval for the students to physically return to school, the school’s termly fee will revert to Two hundred and twenty thousand naira (N220,000). However, since N135,000 would have been paid for the online program, the balance of fees to be paid on resumption of school physically, would be calculated based on how many weeks the school has till the end of the term (on December 18), at seven thousand eight hundred naira per week. For example, if the Federal and State governments give approval for school to resume on October 19 2020, there would be nine weeks left in the term. Therefore, parents would be required to pay an additional N7,800 X 9 = 70,200. If the governments do not give approval till the end of the year, the N135,000 paid will be sufficient as the tuition for the 2020/2021 first term.
While the coronavirus pandemic has created numerous challenges in education, we have remained committed to adapting and creating solutions to these challenges, to ensure our students are not left behind. Our new online curriculum is driven by modern technology and is in line with global best practices.
We look forward to welcoming you to school (albeit virtually) on September 28.
If you have any questions, please call 08104955195 / 08033714137 / 08107696129
Thank you
Signed
Management