Koa Academy launches Afrikaans virtual campus
South Africa's leading high-engagement online school, Koa Academy, is set to expand its horizons with the launch of Koa Akademie in January 2025.
This Afrikaans home language virtual campus will offer a much-needed educational option for Afrikaans-speaking families, filling a significant gap in the current educational landscape.
Since its inception in 2021, Koa Academy has rapidly grown and now serves 500 learners. With only 5% of government schools in South Africa using Afrikaans as the sole medium of instruction, Koa Akademie aims to provide an innovative alternative that promotes academic excellence and cognitive development through education in a learner’s home language.
Mark Anderson, Principal and Co-founder of Koa Academy, underscored the transformative potential of online education: “Online schooling offers extraordinary flexibility and adaptability, allowing for high-quality, individualized learning.
“The opening of Koa Akademie leverages these advantages, creating a dynamic learning environment where both students and teachers thrive in their native language. By providing education in Afrikaans, we are not only enhancing academic outcomes but also fostering a deeper sense of cultural identity.”
Koa Akademie will be built upon the successful principles that have made Koa Academy an award-winning institution.
Students will participate in an 8-person Pod system, each with a dedicated Pod teacher to ensure consistent engagement and personalised support. The school, accredited by the Independent Examinations Board (IEB), will initially offer Grades 6 to 8, with plans to expand to additional grades as the school develops.
Esmarel Potgieter, Head of Academics at Koa Akademie, highlighted the school’s commitment to excellence in Afrikaans education: “Koa Akademie is dedicated to delivering a high-quality online education tailored specifically for Afrikaans home language speakers.
“By providing a learning environment designed around their native language, we set students up for academic success and offer Afrikaans-speaking families a valuable new option in the education system.”
One of Koa Academy’s core strengths is its ability to create and curate top-notch online learning resources. This expertise will be pivotal for Koa Akademie, where the focus will be on developing new digital materials to enrich the online learning experience for Afrikaans learners.
The launch of Koa Akademie represents a strategic step forward in Koa Academy’s mission to provide education that is both individualised and adaptable to the specific needs of families.
Anderson added, “It’s our purpose to get quality education into the hands of people, but not just at mass scale, our focus is on individualisation, so that families are empowered to make school choices based on what is relevant to them, and what is customised for them.
“In the bigger picture of Koa’s growth and development, we see other virtual campuses like Koa Akademie emerging, enabling more and more families to find quality education that is uniquely tailored to their contexts and their needs.
“Education is a highly personalised journey, and the online education environment has an incredible and incomparable scope to support an abundance of robust individualised educational experiences.”
With the impending launch of Koa Akademie, Koa Academy is poised to make a significant impact on the South African educational landscape, offering a new and innovative path for Afrikaans-speaking students across the country.