Outschool

I agree with the complaints below. They lack extreme accountability and only care about your money, not your child. In cases of proven error on their end, they repeatedly fail to correct their errors and take appropriate action to resolve the matter. They lack extreme integrity and consistently demonstrate a gross lack of ethics. Not something we should expose any child to

This site particularly discriminates against Christianity while allowing other philosophies and religions on the platform without need for a ton of disclaimers. I no longer participate on this platform for that reason

Not happy with outschool.com teachers this week... one of them cancelled two minutes before class on Wednesday, claiming his internet was down... we just got an email from another teachers that she was holding debate class this week because it was "Spring break" and they were going on their "staycation" -- is she kidding? Um... we are ALL on a very long Spring break and staycation and the whole reason we signed up for these classes is to continue our education and have activities NOW...

Outschool educational classes being your choice for your child's education depends on two things: your child and which teacher you get. My daughter has taken some dance classes and all of the teachers so far have been wonderful and patient. She participated in a pre-K class where the teacher was not in control of the class so she struggled to stay focused or even hear her teacher talk over the other kids.

My daughters took classes on Outschool for 4 years. Outschool disrupted the after-school business at the time~ by attracting great teachers and offering interesting teaching solutions for children in K-12. However, their customer service is appalling. If you have a problem, they are ineffective at solving issues and limited to copy/pasting responses (see pictures attached). Over the past three months or so, the Outschool platform requires to upgrade zoom--if not, the link for the class won't launch and your child if he/she is at home with a caregiver will miss the class.

The good news is that there's plenty of competition coming to this space.

Outschool is more concerned with getting your children pronouns right than solving basic technical glitches--can't they solve both? They are based in San Francisco after all!

I applied as a teacher, and I am a retired teacher, and I don't know who manages the lessons, but they have no idea about education. I have tried to reach out to them, and you get no response, only "canned" messages, which is amazing to me. There are many sites much larger than them and at least you can speak to someone after going through different channels. I regret signing up for all it took to get in.

I am an excellent tutor with years of experience. I am also a college educated person. I applied for Outschool and was declined. I believe it is because they are antagonistic towards Christians. I was going to offer a Christian history course. The left is ruining children and education. I was simply going to look at Christianity from a historical and scholarly lens. Stay away, they are the AntiChrist.

This platform is doing illegal things and taking advantage of teachers. Parents need to stop supporting it and teachers need to stop joining it.

I have taught and been a parent on the platform. They will not honor the teacher referral program, they do not provide teacher support, and the emails to teachers are very mean/unkind if a family needs a refund for any reason (even ones that don't involve you). They threaten teachers they will remove them if they don't pay pay refunds in 2 business days. They will email teachers threats about the smallest things it is a very toxic environment for teachers.

As a parent on the platform, the site has no family support. The site has many technology issues, and logs outs are common. If you try to message support you only get a bot and no follow up. Teachers will disappear off the platform, and your child is left confused.

Get out and stop supporting this platform.

Outschool demands cameras to be used in order for kids to participate on the platform. The platform is used by students in various countries. Online privacy matters and instances of online piracy is a high risk, as it is inevitable that oversight is not strict in certain countries to combat online privacy issues or online piracy. There's really no control over what people do with your child's image in the recorded class, especially if the players are out of the country. As an alternative to having children recorded, Outschool places families in another risk. If the child doesn't feel comfortable having a camera on to participate in paid classes, Outschool then demands a photo of the child and parent together. There is no public policy on what Outschool can or can't do with your child's image after they demand the photo to be transmitted non-encrypted electronically to their office. Even larger, more established fortune 500 companies with extensive security have been targets of ID theft. Outschool should eliminate the mandate for a parent to send a child's photo electronically non encrypted and/or they should reasonably create photo storage in a more updated, safe manner. A transparent public policy on what is done with a child's image is a basic necessity for parents to view if children not wanting to be on camera are forced to send Outschool photos. Most importantly, parents need to be aware that kids may leave the camera and audio on after a class is over. An Outschool teacher recorded a child's private home and audio well after the class time was over. There is no agreement nor allowance for some stranger to look into your home or listen to private conversation. There's no public policy made available to parents on Outschool to prevent teachers from doing so in the future. Experts know the dangers of recording any person, especially a child, in the privacy of their own home without consent. Talk about a nightmare once discovered. Given the complete lack of judgement for this teacher just for that, you already know for certain there are other problems with them. As others have depicted, teacher quality can vary. This specific teacher's example clearly shows her broad poor judgement, antiquated entitlement and manipulative behavior. An older teacher recording someone else's home and video interacting without that parents permission using Outschool as a platform shows a seriously tainted lens and a complete lack of self awareness.
Outschool can't have complicated camera mandates then allow a teacher to abuse a paying clients' privacy. Outschool can't just make for-profit decisions, they have to follow broader privacy regulations (sometimes varying by state), as well.

Beware! The teachers are kind and great, the company is super sketchy! Not only can you not access your stored credit card *unless you are purchasing another class*, you have to contact them to find out how to stop this from happening. Read that again. You do not have control over your credit card and billing, a. K. a. Thievery. I have to go to my bank and deny all charges going forward from Outschool and spend my time making sure every parenting group I belong to knows about these practices. Very archaic and making parent and guardian lives harder. There are plenty of better places for your kids to be learning. This is no ally for kids or families.

My 8 year old daughter attended this class, I sat right beside her to ensure that she would pay attention. However, before the class even started, the teacher said she saw another child and kept asking who else was attending the class. I explained again and again that I was the mother and there was no other child attending, she still questioned me for quite a while, during the whole time, her tone was harsh, as if yelling at a little kid, which made me very uncomfortable. Finally the teacher said that maybe she mistakenly saw someone, and moved on. A few days later, I received an email from outschool, indicated that I was reported for letting multiple children attended the class! It writes"... There is no way to retroactively pay for your other learner who attended this class but please make sure that this doesn't happen again..." To my understanding, lots of classes are recorded, I would strongly suggest outschool to review the recording and show me the evidence that there is more than one kid attended that class!

Trying to figure out why the teacher insisted on another child attending the class, I realized that my another younger kid, she got curious and stopped by her sister briefly to watch what she was doing, but then she ran upstairs to play with her toys. When the teacher questioned me, my younger kid was already gone before I even sat down, I didn't think of it. My another daughter is only 6 year old, she has very different interest with my 8 year old, she does not like drawing, even if she has to draw, she likes cute animal doodles much more than 3D cityscape, she has absolute no interest in this particular class, and again, the FACT IS: she Did Not, and she has NO interest in sneaking in the class!

My advice to the teacher: Please do not accuse and report people just based on your assumption. You are not a detective!
My advice to outschool: you don't send out some nasty email to other people just based on one side of the story -- Even a judger will have to investigate, collect evidences, and listen to both sides of stories before any condemnation! Especially we are also your client, who pays for your service and expect customer satisfaction.

My son has enjoyed all the classes he's taken so far from Outschool. We haven't used it for his main subjects, just extracurriculars. One teacher has a Studio Ghibli art series and taught him how to make Soot Sprites from Totoro. Another teacher offers courses such as Design Your Own Zoo and Design Your Own Town- we didn't try the town one yet, but the Zoo was so much fun for my son. I love that they offer social clubs arranged by age and interest, as socializing has been difficult during lockdowns. They have ones for Minecraft, Mario and even Animal Crossing. I love that they run background checks on the instructors and have secular content which- while becoming more common- is often harder to find in the homeschool world. I also like that they are considered a vendor with most hybrid-homeschool charters, so the courses are covered by them.

I got on the platform during covid, and was doing great. I was set to have 310 new students beginning my flex classes this fall. I setup a referral group on FB recommending the platform, and I recommended 258 teachers. We are suppose to get $200 for each teacher referred. Then all of a sudden they closed my acct. I lost full access to all of my curriculum I was using for flex classes, and all of my classes were canceled. I lost 310 students! I tried to message support but it was non existant. That occurred on August 17. Now on 9/13 they wrote back and told me they do not have to honor the teacher referral program since I no longer have an acct. Wow! So the $51,800 referral they were suppose to pay is now gone. But all of my students are lost. Beware everyone! This platform is very shady. Google you will see they are doing this to many teachers.

I found out on Sept 1 that they were still registering families in my classes. I created another email address and logged on, and was able to register for my class and pay. So they are accepting payments for classes when I am no longer able to get on the platform. After 24 hours I asked for a refund, they said I could only get a pro rated refund, so then I realized they are keeping my classes and others on the platform to get a week or two out of each class in hopes the parents do not realize the class is unmanned for awhile. Very wrong on so many ways. See full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAzb7grjmyM where I click my past links and I am able to show you how I can still register and pay.

My daughter is educated in ways we could never get in any other setting. My son is going to rejoin for high school this year after seeing how flexible my daughter's schedule is while getting "real" education (as she calls it). My son knows how much "fill" goes into his days in his school, while my daughter's Outschool classes are focused and she never goes unanswered. She is 12 and knows how to put together business cases, manage her time and schedule, cook a 5-course meal, is going into Algebra II, etc. She thinks ahead because she has a mix of daily and weekly classes; it's teaching her to approach each day as an important day, instead of the "only 3 days until the weekend" mentality. The fundamentals are so strong with the class sizes and the montessori style break-outs. My son's school is just managed chaos, with so many miserable teachers; Outschool has the best educators I've ever met. There is accountability in that parents may post any review and watch the class to make sure it's meeting expectations. We've have parent-teacher meetings and the teacher welcomes feedback, even has shifted things based on our suggestion (something that would never happen in traditional schools). I am still blown away after 3 full years and just wish the majority of education was just like it is on Outschool.

This is an unsafe teaching environment for any educator. They will not pay you the full amounts you are owed. They will harass you if you have any questions or concerns. Outschool will raise the teacher fees with no warning. They have a lack of communication with their teachers that often leave teachers feeling helpless and confused.

Loved our classes for my kid's violin interest. He earned so much and had a wonderful tutor! There are other lessons too but I didnt try them yet will update after trying

My kids have been taking Outschool classes since the very beginning of our homeschooling journey back in 2017. Five years later we are still very happy with the site. There is so much variety to choose from and the site is reputable with consistent high-quality classes.

Teaching on the platform has been an absolute blessing for my family as well. Annually I average $75/hr working part-time hours. A lot of teachers who complain about not making money or getting enrollments have only themselves to blame; I often check their profiles and notice they have only 1 or 2 classes and a poorly-made bio video, class descriptions are riddled with typos and/or they have negative parent feedback. You have to keep working at your business, not sit there and wait for life to happen. I love teaching on Outschool!

I've tried many classes here, most were excellent but in a few cases the instructor/class wasnt so great so sometimes can be a hit or miss but overall it is a great value

How it works is that teachers write their own classes, and post them on Outschool. It's kind of like an "uber" school, so you browse or search for classes that your kid will like (or needs!) and sign up with the teacher. My youngest has done everything from a fun class on Learning to phonics with My Little Pony, to an amazing class on learning about the water cycle by Making A Terrarium. My oldest has used covid to hone his essay-writing skills with an increddible teacher who has helped him improve so much. Most of the classes have been great and worth the money. We've had a few dud teachers but that's been the exception not the rule. Its best to take a one-time class with each teacher first, so you can see what the teacher is like. If you like them, then enrol in their multi session classes. It gives you much more control than you normally get in the school system, which I really like.

There are different types of classes and styles of teaching.

Kids can do hard core academics. Most of the classes we have found try and do academics through something that interests the kids, like learn maths through minecraft or something so they stay interested.

Mostly, my kids are doing best where they do a project or learn about a topic in depth over a period of time.

The teachers who we have liked best tend to have formal teaching qualifications and charge a bit more than $10 per hour (on outschool, you almost always get what you pay for. Outschool takes 30% of the fees, and 70% goes to the teacher - so I can't imagine that a super-skilled teacher would be willing or able to work for $7 an hour per child). With some trial-and-error, we have found teachers who know how to hold the kids attention, make the subject interesting, and (unlike a lot of the stuff that comes home from school) know how to work the technology and adapt their teaching so it works online.

All of the teachers are screened and police-checked which is important to me: not every applicant is approved. One of our teachers told us that Outschool also screens every class proposal and that one of his classes once got sent back for revision seven times! So, my understanding is that not only the teachers, but the classes are also checked for quality and the best classes will have a lot of preparation and background work.

As one of the other reviewers here complained, the Outschool teachers don't work "on parent demand". I don't mind this as I assume they set their timetable around their own families and commitments (LOL). However, we've found that most teachers are willing to negotiate a class time for us, if we ask. Mostly, it's easy enough to work around though. Unlike some of the reviewers, we've not had any problems with credit cards. Sometimes things have come up and we can't attend. It's been very easy to log-in, transfer the enrolment or cancel a class. The refund policies for each class are clearly stated. We've even had the occasional teacher give us a refund for a cancelled class even though they weren't required.

The only criticism I have is that it's sometimes difficult to tell the difference between classes that teach something, and the more light-on classes (these seem to fill in some time but I'm not sure how much they learn. One of my kids did a single class on bats - he liked it OK, but I don't think he actually remembered anything and it didn't spark his interest to learn more). So you have to be willing to try a few classes to get the feel of different teachers, and what your kid likes, before committing to a class with multiple sessions.

We initially started with outschool to try and fill in some gaps with covid school lockdowns. But We will continue with a lot of the classes outside of school, because they add a lot of things that my kids don't get in school.

When I started homeschooling I wanted live online classes for my children not 1 every week or a half an hour a day like most online programs give and claim to have active teacher involvement with the kids. I found outschool and couldn't be happier. My kids take 3 or 4 classes a day, I reinforce what was taught in those classes. It has worked phenomenally. My daughter has gone up by two grade levels in math and a whole level in reading. My son is doing 4 grade math at 8 years old. I have never had any problems with outschool customer service. They always reply back to me within 24 hours. They even wrote me an email asking if they could send me a Christmas card. The teachers are sweet caring and passionate about teaching my kids. I really can't say good enough things about this place.

So incredibly excited that I found this site. They have virtual classes available for all ages and they offer things like Pokemon Phonics, Architecture History + Minecraft and Sign Language Story Time. My son and I have a great time looking the classes and deciding what we want to learn about. Definitely recommend to anyone who homeschools or anyone looking to supplement their child's traditional schooling.