The partnerships coordinator at the Virtual High School in Bayfield says location really doesn't mean much in education anymore.
Jean Anne Hamilton said they now have international partnerships with students in Colombia, the Ukraine, Barbados and Beijing, to name a few. On Tuesday, she had a visit from their partner in South Korea.
Hamilton said language can be a challenge for some of the students, but it's also why they students are coming to them so that they're more comfortable pursuing a post-secondary education in Ontario, elsewhere in Canada or the United States.
“A majority of the partner schools that we work with, their student's end goal is to come to university or college in North America, so having that English instruction and understanding is important for them to be successful in the next steps of their education," she said.
Hamilton also said enrollment is growing.
“Partnerships, specifically, we're probably at around 250 students and in 2018 we were about 17 per cent international student over all of Virtual High School, so that's a significant number when you look at our 8,000 student body population," she said.