Six months into the pandemic, the Western Isles had escaped relatively unscathed. It had recorded the lowest number of coronavirus cases in Scotland since the start of the outbreak - 10 in total. But that changed in late September when a Covid cluster led to the closure of schools in Uist, including the islands’ only secondary, Sgoil Lionacleit in Benbecula, which, along with Daliburgh primary in South Uist, ended up being closed for two weeks.

Thanks to its rurality, the Western Isles is, however, better equipped than many councils to ensure that education continues when the coronavirus keeps teachers and pupils out of school. Back in 2016, it started its e-Sgoil (e-school), specialising in live online lessons so that it could plug gaps in the curriculum on a temporary basis until a teacher could be secured, or to deliver subjects such as psychology that would otherwise be unavailable. The local authority was keen to ensure that at least six secondary subjects could be offered to all pupils who wanted to be taught in Gaelic.

Sgoil Lionacleit closed on Monday 28 September. By Wednesday evening, the decision had been taken to keep it shut until the October break, meaning students faced missing a total of two weeks’ worth of lessons. But on the Thursday morning, the e-Sgoil took over teaching the 145 students in S1-3 in order to free up Lionacleit staff to support students in the senior phase, who were promised at least one live online lesson in every subject, every week.

e-Sgoil headteacher Angus Maclennan says that the two-week programme designed for the S1-3 students - which broke the day up into three 90-minute chunks - can now be offered to other schools that find themselves in similar situations, given that self-isolation usually lasts for a fortnight. Indeed, as the lessons were being delivered to Lionacleit students, self-isolating S1-3 students from Moray and Highland councils also joined in.

Since the pandemic took hold in Scotland back in March 2020, the e-Sgoil has gained in prominence. It had already attracted attention because it offered a port in a storm for schools at a time of teacher shortage. In the past, Maclennan has described e-Sgoil as akin to a teacher dating agency: it has staff on its books and, when requests come in from schools, it attempts to match the two. But now - with face-to-face learning constantly under threat because of Covid-19 - the expertise in live online teaching that e-Sgoil has built up is being seen as even more crucial than before. And, from its base in the Western Isles, it now has a truly national role: the Scottish government has asked it and Education Scotland to ensure “the availability of online lessons that will help to support and augment the work of classroom teachers”.

Maclennan says that the e-Sgoil now has a timetable of about a dozen senior-phase subjects “ready to go” if students or classes have to self-isolate, or in the event of closures.

“We are looking to be on standby to cater for pupils who are either self-isolating or shielding long term,” says e-Sgoil depute head Steven Graham. “Ultimately, it’s up to their schools - they retain the overall responsibility for delivering the curriculum if a pupil or a class is having to self-isolate, but we are there as an option.”

So, when a teacher in East Ayrshire came down with the coronavirus in September and her P4 class had to isolate, the e-Sgoil arranged for them to be taught virtually by a teacher based in the Western Isles.

The virtual school has also developed a programme of supported study sessions in 17 subjects that run for 45 minutes after school. At the time of writing, roughly 1,500 students had engaged with the classes at National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher level from more than 200 secondaries across Scotland, and extra webinars for subjects such as Higher maths and English were being put on because more than 350 students wanted to join the sessions.

‘Complementing’ schools’ efforts

Maclennan says they have been “stunned by the demand out there”, although with more than 125,000 students in the senior phase in Scottish secondaries, the figures remain relatively low. He points out, however, that it is early in the year for students to be showing this kind of willingness to take on extra work - that is something that is usually seen as the exams start to loom, not a few weeks into the new school year.

Graham says: “At the moment, students are not allowed to remain in school beyond the end of the school day so cleaning can take place, and study support is something that is not on offer locally in the traditional sense of having students stay behind. This is a really effective way for us to deliver study support, doing it from their own homes at five, six or seven in the evening.”

Graham - who is responsible for the e-Sgoil’s interrupted learners programme - takes a National 5 maths supported-study class at 5pm on a Monday, which is attended by 120 students who tune in from 28 of Scotland’s 32 local authority areas. As an e-Sgoil depute head, he has delivered online lessons before, but usually to only 20 or 30 students. This is a very different proposition, he admits. Students’ mics and cameras are turned off; Graham has to have the support of a second maths teacher, Donald MacLeod; and students raise problems via the chat function.

The sessions tend to follow a pattern, with Graham sending students a 10- or 15-minute video ahead of the lesson, in which he sets out the concept that will be covered. He goes over this ground again at the start of the webinar to ensure there’s “a common starting point”. He then gets the class to work through a series of questions that get progressively harder, stopping before stepping up a level for more explanation and illustration.

The approach is working well and the feedback has been good, Graham says. The learners have been doing the class for just a few weeks - it started at the beginning of September - but a survey involving 52 of them found nine in 10 thought the webinars helped them gain confidence in the subject, and only one said they wouldn’t recommend them to a friend.

Maclennan says: “We are complementing what schools are doing - we are not taking their place. I would not recommend this kind of approach for teaching a whole course.”

Flexible option for returnees

It has been recognised by the Scottish government that the coronavirus pandemic will spark a need for more teachers - and it has promised an extra 1,000 of them. The General Teaching Council for Scotland has also been set the task of seeing whether teachers who have allowed their registration to lapse in the past couple of years would be willing to return. The e-Sgoil, however, offers a way to keep teaching for those who need more flexible working arrangements than schools can typically provide.

Back in 2018, I sat with Mairi MacKay in her living room in Perth while she delivered a Gaelic lesson to S5 students at Oban High in Argyll and Bute, nearly 100 miles away. MacKay was clear that if it had not been for e-Sgoil, she would have been forced out of teaching. Her son was born with a rare condition and was out of school for periods of up to six weeks at a time, and she needed a job that allowed her to work from home.

On the e-Sgoil’s books today is a deaf physics and science teacher who had to give up working in schools but, through the use of a headset, can teach for the e-Sgoil “very effectively”. Meanwhile, an English and Spanish teacher who had to give up her job to look after her mother is able to deliver lessons for e-Sgoil because it allows her to stay at home.

Now, e-Sgoil is also tapping into partner organisations to secure staff. During lockdown, it started to provide language classes in partnership with Scilt, Scotland’s national centre for languages, which were delivered by Scilt staff who are fully qualified teachers. It is also working with Keep Scotland Beautiful, Young Scot and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, and has a meeting lined up with Glasgow Caledonian University to explore the possibility of partnering with it to offer Advanced Highers.

The university’s Advanced Higher Hub usually offers about half a dozen subjects at this level to S6 students in Glasgow schools, to give them a taste of life on campus and the opportunity to study subjects that are not offered in their own schools. However, this year education secretary John Swinney has made it clear that students should not be travelling to other locations to access courses. He told the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee recently that this should be done remotely.

Even school inspectors are signing up to deliver e-Sgoil lessons. An Education Scotland spokesperson said that the body was helping to develop “the national e-learning offer”.

He added: “The development involves Education Scotland staff working with e-Sgoil staff to test out how well the programmes work in the online environment; and this work is ongoing.

“Additionally, more than 20 Education Scotland staff have volunteered so far to do the e-Sgoil training for online teaching so that they can be part of e-Sgoil’s standby teaching pool, which can be called on if needed.”

Maclennan is quietly confident that e-Sgoil can keep up with the demand. However, the school also sees a big part of its role as modelling “how to support pupils in a Covid world”, as Graham puts it. When it came to the online lessons at Sgoil Lionacleit, for example, teachers who did not feel confident in online delivery were encouraged to observe the e-Sgoil lessons, with a view to building their own skills.

“We are providers to a degree, but we are catalysts to an even greater degree. Even a huge organisation like the health service can be overwhelmed, so if there is another national lockdown, it would be extremely difficult [for schools],” says Maclennan.

He believes that technology will never replace teachers, but he does admit that teachers who fail to embrace technology could find themselves left behind. He also believes that live lessons online should be part of the package of support that pupils are offered when they are unable to attend through no fault of their own.

There is “a huge difference”, he says, between online learning and online teaching: with the latter, he argues, it is possible to retain the interaction between pupil and teacher, “the critical factor in teaching”.

Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

For more on e-Sgoil and to see the latest version of the supported study timetable, head to e-sgoil.com/studysupport2020

This article originally appeared in the 30 October 2020 issue under the headline “Augmenting reality”