History of FVDES

Founded in 1990, Fraser Valley Distance Education School is one of the largest schools in a provincial consortium of nine distance education schools located throughout British Columbia. These schools have their roots in traditional correspondence distance education but are rapidly undergoing change to provide online course delivery. The school currently has over 530 full-time online learners. The school also has around 3000 correspondence students. These learners use predominantly paper-based correspondence materials although many are starting to enroll in the new online course offerings.

To address the needs of online learners, the school has moved rapidly to incorporate online course offerings and is currently undergoing unprecedented growth. Over the past three years, the teaching staff has grown from seven to ten elementary teachers, six secondary, two special needs teachers and three teaching assistants. Technical help has also grown from a single part-time technician to two full-time technicians. The number of full-time online students at FVDES has risen over the last two years from a capped provincial pilot number of 110 to well over 500 full time online students. The school has part-time online students in a local high school campus for specialty partnership courses such as Cisco and Information Technology 11 and 12. There are approximately 300 part-time online students. Projections are for further growth in the online section of our student population as the school moves to include more online grade 11 and 12 courses.