School by Skype
Online teachers deliver lessons from miles away
A ‘VIRTUAL teacher’ scheme has been launched for children in remote areas.
It allows them to tune in to lessons from hundreds of miles away.
Teacher shortages have hit far-flung parts of Scotland and left island schools struggling to recruit enough specialist teachers.
The ‘e-school’ – or ‘e-Sgoil’ in Gaelic – is based in the Western Isles but has helped other local authorities, including Perth and Kinross and Aberdeen.
In one case, a supply teacher from Dumbarton delivered chemistry lessons to pupils on Harris. Another taught computer science to Higher pupils there, while doing up a house on the Orkney island of Sanday.
The e-school secured £500,000 in Scottish Government funding, which was matched by Western Isles Council.
Its backers hope it will slow population decline and strengthen the economy by allowing more people to live, learn and work in the Western Isles. It could also benefit urban areas. The virtual school’s headteacher, Angus Maclennan, said it had around ten teachers on its books, one of them full-time.
He told the Times Educational Supplement Scotland: ‘We have added to the teaching workforce and given people a reason and an opportunity to come back into the teaching profession.’
The scheme uses Skype-style conferencing software and Glow, the digital network for schools.
Mr Maclennan said: ‘This is not the answer to all the problems in education – but it’s a very good tool in a box.’
He stressed that the e-school was not about online learning but about having a teacher in front of a class on a screen ‘interacting, encouraging, cajoling’.
He said pupils did not differentiate between teachers being physically in the classroom and those giving lessons remotely.
When asked how they found not having a teacher, pupils ‘looked at us as if we had grown horns and gone mad’, he said, as they did not recognise any real difference. A spokesman for the EIS teaching union said it preferred pupils to learn in the same classroom as their teachers, but the virtual school could be a practical solution in rural or remote areas where there might only be one or two studying a subject.
The spokesman said: ‘This allows pupils, no matter where they live, to have access to a rich and diverse curriculum in school, which will prepare them for life after education.’