How We Accredit Online Schools - Ensuring Full Educational Quality

Accrediting Online Schools

GOER provides comprehensive accreditation for online schools, ensuring they deliver a complete and safe educational experience equivalent to high-quality in-person learning. Our process goes beyond content review to assess the full learning environment and governance of the school.

  • Full panel review of school operations.
  • Academic quality of full programmes (subject breadth, progression).
  •  Safeguarding and student welfare across digital platforms.
  •  AI use and ethical digital learning governance.
  •  Leadership, staffing, and teacher qualification standards.
  •  Student outcomes and quality assurance of assessments.
  •  School governance, transparency, and compliance.

How this differs from Online Tutoring Accreditation

Scope: Online schools deliver a full curriculum to enrolled students; tutoring services deliver supplementary support.

 

Safeguarding: Online schools must have full safeguarding frameworks and pastoral care for all students; tutoring focuses on safe delivery of individual or group sessions.

 

Academic Accountability: Online schools are responsible for formal learning outcomes and progression; tutoring supports learning but is not accountable for formal certification.

 

Governance: Online schools require leadership, governance, and inspection-ready documentation; tutoring services require operational and instructional quality, but not full school-level governance.

Accreditation Panelist Documentation for Online School Accreditation:

1. GOER Accreditation: Teaching and Learning Standard

  • This document provides a framework for evaluating the Teaching and Learning standard. Please ensure all sections are completed thoroughly and accurately to support a fair and comprehensive accreditation review.

2. GOER Accreditation: Student Welfare Standard

  • This student welfare evaluation document is designed to assess how well an institution supports students in key areas like support services, wellbeing, safety, inclusivity, and engagement—culminating in a compliance rating with GOER standards.

3. Safeguarding Accreditation

  • This is a safeguarding evaluation framework, designed to assess how effectively an institution protects children and young people. It covers six core areas: child protection policies, staff training, reporting procedures, recruitment practices, physical and emotional safety, and online safety

4. Leadership Accreditation

  • This document provides a structured template for GOER accreditation panelists to evaluate the Leadership standard. Each sub-standard is broken down into granular criteria with tickable checkboxes and editable comment boxes to facilitate detailed assessment.

5. GOER Accreditation: Governance Standard

  • This is a governance evaluation tool used in GOER Accreditation. It assesses how well an institution’s governing board oversees areas like structure, policy, finance, compliance, risk, and stakeholder engagement—each with measurable criteria and compliance ratings to ensure effective, ethical, and strategic leadership.

6. Communication with School Community Accreditation

  • This document provides a structured template for GOER accreditation panelists to evaluate the 'Communication with School Community' standard. It breaks down the standard into specific sub-standards and criteria, offering granular checklists and comment boxes for detailed assessment. The final summary for each section provides a clear indication of compliance and allows for overall significant comments. This template ensures a thorough, consistent, and well-documented accreditation process.

7. Extra-Curricular Activities Accreditation

  • This document provides a comprehensive template for GOER accreditation panelists to evaluate the 'Extra-Curricular Activities' standard. It includes detailed criteria for each sub-standard, interactive checkboxes, and editable comment boxes to facilitate a thorough and consistent assessment.

8. GOER Accreditation: Use of AI Standard

  • This document provides a template for GOER accreditation panelists to evaluate an institution's adherence to the 'Use of AI' standard. It breaks down the standard into key sub-standards, including ethical use, data privacy, staff training, student guidance, curriculum integration, and monitoring/evaluation. Each sub-standard features specific criteria with interactive checkboxes, comment boxes, and a summary grading section to facilitate a thorough and consistent accreditation process.

9. Future Vision Accreditation Template

  • This template provides a framework for assessing an institution's 'Future Vision' standard according
    to GOER accreditation guidelines. Panelists should provide detailed comments and assessments to
    inform the accreditation decision.

10. Ethos Standard Accreditation Template

  • This document serves as a template for GOER accreditation panellists to evaluate the Ethos Standard. Please complete each section thoroughly, providing detailed comments and selecting the appropriate compliance level for each sub-standard.

11. Staff Support Accreditation Template:

  • This template is designed for GOER accreditation panelists to evaluate the 'Staff Support' standard.