Varsity Tutors launches Virtual School Day for free amid COVID-19 school closures

Varsity Tutors, the edtech company looking to connect students with tutors live and on-demand, is today releasing a free product called Virtual School Day for students and parents, as schools close across the globe due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Virtual School Day offers more than 20 hours of live, online classes across a variety of core subjects for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. Each class is taught by one of Varsity Tutors' expert tutors, who has experience both teaching the subject matter but also giving instruction virtually.

Core classes include K-12 math (from arithmetic to calculus), reading, literature, writing and K-12 science (biology, chemistry, physics), as well as a handful of other sessions. For example, Virtual School Day offers study hall sessions with expert tutors in math, science and English for students who want to focus on certain subjects.

Virtual School Day will also have special sessions for each age group, including The Story of Your Favorite Fairy Tales and Secrets of Staying Healthy for elementary students, The Science of Pandemics and Video Game Sound Design for middle schoolers and History of the National Parks and Careers in Science for high schoolers.

Over the past year, Varsity Tutors has leaned hard into online classes. The company acquired Veritas Prep in January 2019 to expand further into online classes. Since launch, Varsity Tutors had been focused on one-to-one tutoring sessions, originally in person and, eventually, on-demand online through live video chat.

The company developed an app and added whiteboard functionality, doc editing and other tools to its tutoring suite.

With more than $100 million in funding, Varsity Tutors has been able to expand its product suite beyond tutoring, to live, online courses, as well as free test prep courses for SAT and ACT.

Here's what Varsity Tutors Chief Academic Officer, Brian Galvin, had to say about Virtual School Day in a prepared statement:

The massive number of school closures presents a daunting challenge for both students and parents. While some schools are offering online education, most are sending kids home with minimal self-guided homework or no school resources at all. Parents are rightly worried about their students sliding academically, and having their kid's time consumed by video games or other empty calorie entertainment. By providing free, high quality resources that enable students to maintain academic momentum during this difficult time, we hope to remove a key source of stress for families worldwide.

All Virtual School Day classes are in English and available internationally. Parents interested in checking it out can learn more at this webinar on Tuesday, March 17th at 8pm EDT.