The Learning Place, which operates out of Dunedin, trains about 10,000 students across the country every year online and in person.
The training is largely theory-based vocational learning to get students ready for employment.
The Learning Place director Pieter van de Klundert said since the Alert Level 4 lockdown closed all schools the online platform of his company’s education offering had attracted interest from schools and parents wanting their children to continue working towards gaining NCEA unit standards.
"All of our schools have still got to achieve NCEA outcomes," Mr van de Klundert said.
"So what we did is we mobilised our team and we got them to put all of our school courses — all the school unit standards that are theory based — we got them to put them on to our platform."
The company went from having five courses to 14.
The courses — largely in compliance training such as in health and safety and hazardous substances — were done on the online platform, called Kura Cloud, which was built by Dunedin company AD Instruments and was "a bit of a Rolls-Royce machine".
They were largely online interactive courses — students would read a resource, answer questions, watch videos and do quizzes.
Schools were not well prepared for getting assessments over the line during lockdown.
"It’s very, very difficult for them to do assessments online because they’re not geared up for it.
"We have a really good understanding of the learning environment for online learning. We’re the largest single provider of vocational short courses in secondary schools across New Zealand."
During lockdown, enrolments at The Learning Place had increased by 200.
"Each week, it just grows and grows and grows. Last week, it was really flat out ... This week, it’s just gone through the roof," he said.
"We’ve got so many schools contacting us wanting to book in whole classes or whole year groups to do courses."
Many parents had also contacted The Learning Place to inquire about courses for their teenagers, Mr van de Klundert said.
It was likely to be about six months before life was back to something like normality, he said.
But he was remaining optimistic.
"It’s going to change the nature of the way we learn.
"People will have a growing awareness of how accessible online learning is. I know that workplaces certainly are.
"We’re pretty confident we’ll see a surge coming out of this from schools wanting to continue with courses."
