While a university education remains a top aspiration for many young South Africans, and their parents, it’s a particularly challenging pathway in the country. Apart from the shortage of places limiting access, a persistently high percentage of students drop out before completion, or don’t manage to achieve their degrees within the allotted time. In looking for solutions to the country’s ‘dropout crisis’, there is increasing focus on what high schools are doing to better prepare learners for the transition to university. Mark Anderson, Principal and Co-founder of Koa Academy, South Africa’s leading high-engagement online school says, “It is possible for a high school to deliver an education and even achieve good matric marks, while not equipping its students sufficiently for university and the real world. The problem is not just that the work gets harder, but that many high schools are not bridging the gap in terms of higher-order thinking and responsibility skills.” Learning how to think critically in preparation for university Many traditional schools focus on memorisation and repetition, and provide just a basic understanding of concepts, and this is what Mark refers to as lower-order thinking. It leads learners to believe that there is one right answer for every question and all they should do is memorise the one right answer. However, forward-thinking high schools are focusing on the development of critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation and interpretation of data, which are more nuanced and challenging ways of learning content. Mark explains, “If I teach you how to think critically, how to evaluate information and construct a good argument, you’re not going to necessarily know the answer to a particular question, but you will have the thinking skills to solve the problem. So, if you are adept at higher-order thinking, then you can go into an exam, see a question you have never seen before, and instead of being stumped, use your higher-order thinking skills to find the solution to the problem. This means that higher-order thinking is much more practically applicable to real-life situations where you are not going to be able to memorise the answers to everything. In real life, most questions don’t have one specific, correct answer. Most questions have nuanced answers that integrate complexity and ambiguity. Teaching that higher-order thinking during high school is key to being well-prepared for university.” Learning how to manage yourself A second aspect of university studies that new students stumble over is what Mark calls ‘the personal responsibility gap’. He says, “Managing yourself and your work competently is a foundational expectation when you get to university. However, in traditional high school settings, parents and teachers take too much responsibility on behalf of the learner for too long. A simple example of this is, if a teacher is having to walk their matric class through how to set up an effective study timetable, that’s too late in the game. Kids need to be learning self-organising skills at a much younger age. There needs to be a higher degree of ownership that is age appropriate as learners progress through the school years. If parents and teachers don’t expect this higher degree of ownership from learners, then they go off to university without the skills and practice to make them competent at basic executive functioning. It’s not that students don’t want to take personal responsibility – it’s that they don’t know how and they have had too little practice at it.” How to build university-ready skills in online classrooms Mark makes it clear that preparing students well for university is not inherent in either traditional or online schooling models. Some traditional schools do a great job at university-preparedness as do some online schools; and both models can come up short if they are not focusing on developing the skills crucial to succeeding at university. “However, being online certainly gives you ample opportunity to prepare kids effectively for university, and at Koa Academy, we are intentionally focused on leveraging these rich opportunities to not only ensure learners are fit for university but that they are getting a school education that also sets them up for success in today’s world of work.” Online school needs a healthy balance of guided and self-paced work. There needs to be sufficient, meaningful teacher engagement so learners are not thrown in the deep-end and expected to self-study their way through high school. This must be blended with self-paced work that empowers learners to take control of their own work, set their own rhythms and be accountable for their deliverables and deadlines. Mark says, “At Koa, we have implemented key strategies that significantly contribute to preparing learners for university or other tertiary studies. This includes being registered with the IEB (Independent Examinations Board) which has an assessment system focused on developing higher-order thinking. We’ve also paid attention to providing a combination of self-paced coursework and live lessons, with small-group workshops and masterclasses that feel very much like the university tutorial experience. Koa also provides learners, teachers and parents with dynamic dashboards for every learner to embed accountability and empower them to keep track of their own progress.” Here are Mark’s 3 top tips for parents who are assessing an online school’s capacity for university preparedness: Mark concludes, “In addition, my advice to parents whose kids are starting to think about tertiary studies is to be curious before you are convinced about your child’s future. I have a lot of conversations with parents who are already strongly committed to what they think their child is going to do in the world of work, while the child is not so sure. So, it is important to ask lots of questions and to really listen to your child. Have open communications where they can talk to you freely about their interests, what they think their strengths are, where their passions lie and what dreams they have for their future. Listen deeply, and then be open to the answers. Modern careers are no longer linear as they once were when we as parents were choosing