FOUR years ago Western Isles Council was in difficult straits trying to teach maths to pupils on the Isle of Barra because, despite national and
international adverts, they couldn’t find a mathematics teacher for love nor money.
They ended up teaching the class through a clunky Skype system and managed to get the pupils through their exams, but director of education Bernard Chisholm thought that, if it had worked in this limited way, a larger scale pilot project should be set up, looking at a range of subjects which were proving difficult to staff to enhance
subject choice for pupils in smaller schools.
Read more: Schools urged to embrace YouTube generation to plug subject gaps
He approached the Scottish Government and Bòrd na Gàidhlig for grant funding and set up a pilot project for our digital school, essentially with
two people and two computers.
That was how e-Sgoil came into being. The initial plan was to service
demand in the Western Isles, but this soon changed as we were
encouraged to provide a service for pupils further afield where
there was a need for digital learning through the use of our video conferencing facilities.
Our first request came from Aberdeen City and this was to keep Gaelic classes going.
Without remote teaching, the pupils would have had to drop out of their SQA courses.
We employed a teacher and, between us, developed an online, real time, interactive style of teaching which worked very well with that group of pupils.
Since then we have built on this style of teaching and expanded to include 17 local authorities throughout Scotland.
We have taught a range of subjects including modern studies, chemistry, physics, English, biology, Gaelic, Spanish, mathematics, music and German at various levels from the early years of secondary right through to Advanced Higher.
The main driver in terms of this taking off in the Western Isles was the desire for equity of provision. Since the inception of e-Sgoil, pupils in small rural schools are now able to access subjects such as Higher Psychology that have not been available to them through
interactive teaching in the past.
But e-Sgoil is not just for schools in rural settings. In addition to Aberdeen, we have schools in semi-urban areas asking us to teach courses because teacher shortages are not just confined to remote
areas.
We are now teaching over 500 pupils across Scotland. While we would never claim that this option is any better than having a teacher in front of a classroom, we would contend that having a good teacher delivering a lesson in this way can be as engaging as having someone in class.
This is not about replacing teachers but about utilising teachers
effectively, either in class or to teach remotely. This is not a
cheap option. This is about real-time, interactive teaching, using highly-skilled people to give pupils a quality experience.
At a time when we are facing teacher shortages, the e-Sgoil approach gives pupils the opportunity to learn subjects of their choice from specialist teachers.
Angus Maclennan is headteacher of e-Sgoil
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here