E-lessons bid to tackle the shortage of teachers in classrooms

DESPERATE education chiefs want to beam lessons electronically to schools across Scotland in a bid to combat teacher shortages.

Education Secretary John Swinney claimed at the SNP conference in Aberdeen at the weekend e-lessons broadcast in classrooms could provide a solution in areas without enough teachers.

A remote learning scheme currently streams lessons from Stornoway to other isolated areas of Scotland.

But Mr Swinney said that could be rolled out to towns and cities. He said: ‘It is designed to deliver education across the challenging geography of the Western Isles, but obviously that could be done to a much wider geography.

‘You can have young people having a proportion of their education driven by online learning and classes led digitally from one centre and deployed in others.’

Mr Swinney said his priority is to encour- age more people to get into teaching, but other solutions had to be considered.

Aberdeen has been severely hit by the lack of teachers, with 137 posts unfilled, a record high for the city. North East MSP Ross Thomson, the Scottish Conservative’s education spokesman, said: ‘This proposal shows how desperate the situation has become. I think parents would be horrified at the prospect of sending their child to school to take a lesson from a teacher on a video screen.’

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of The Educational Institute of Scotland, said: ‘Some schools do make use of technology to assist with distance learning.

‘However, the EIS is very clear that the most effective learning environment for pupils is in the classroom with a teacher.’

Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, said: ‘It’s a short term fix, but it’s not going to solve the problem.’

The Scottish Government said it is supporting universities to meet student teacher targets through a recruitment campaign and £1million from the Scottish Attainment Fund.