The e-Sgoil (e-School) will never be about replacing teachers, but rather “adding value” or intervening in a crisis. That was e-Sgoil headteacher Angus Maclennan’s clear and heartfelt view when I interviewed him back in 2018 for our first long read about the digital school that was delivering lessons remotely, long before Covid.
The e-Sgoil was introduced by the Western Isles Council in 2016 and came about in a bid to give pupils access to a wider range of subjects - in both English and Gaelic - but also to plug gaps if there was a temporary hiatus in face-to-face delivery while a teacher was recruited.
Delivering education in the Western Isles poses unique challenges, given that the population of 26,500 is spread across 15 inhabited islands (there are more than 50 substantial uninhabited islands) and the secondary schools range in size from the 87-pupil Sir E Scott School in Tarbert on Harris to the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway on Lewis, which has over 1,000 pupils, according to Scottish government figures.
Understandably the variety of subjects on offer in a school of over 1,000 pupils cannot be replicated in a school of less than 100 - but it is possible to improve things if you capitalise on technological innovation, and that was the reason for starting the e-Sgoil.
But that e-Sgoil could lead to cuts in teacher numbers has always been a fear even if - as in that 2018 interview - it was always robustly rebuffed by Maclennan. In fact, he argued that e-Sgoil was leading to teachers being retained in the profession who would otherwise have been forced out because it allowed them to work in a more flexible way.
Now, however, this background worry has become a genuine concern and teachers in the Western Isles yesterday declared themselves willing to strike over the council’s remote-learning plans.
A consultative ballot that concluded this week, based on a turnout of 74 per cent, found that 88 per cent of EIS members were prepared to strike over the plans for “harmonised timetables and digitalised learning”.
The move to harmonise timetables for Western Isles secondaries was actually a recommendation made in a 2018 review of the curriculum by Bruce Robertson - a former director of education - who said “harmonisation of timetables across the four secondary schools” was needed “for e-Sgoil to fully establish itself as part of the core of curriculum provision”. Robertson’s vision was that e-Sgoil would essentially become a fifth school when it came to curriculum planning across the council’s secondaries.
So what will harmonisation mean? According to the authority: “While the great majority of lessons will still be delivered traditionally (face-to-face), harmonisation will allow schools to deliver some lessons collaboratively using digital methods.”
It says initially that it will focus on S5 and S6 with plans to bring in S4 from August 2023. It also says the move “is primarily about equity for pupils in terms of the breadth and depth of our curriculum offer”, adding that: “It is not fair that some of our pupils can study, for example, modern studies, Latin or Higher biology while others can’t. Harmonising will provide all pupils, but especially those in the smaller schools, with access to a broader range of subjects, more in line with their needs, aspirations and interests.”
Addressing concerns that teacher numbers will be reduced, the authority echoes Maclennan’s argument by saying that in the last three years “our overall staffing complement has grown through the ability for staff to live locally but teach efficiently to both face-to-face and remote classes”. Official figures show that teacher numbers in the Western Isles went from 313 in 2019 to 317 in 2021 - although in 2018 the authority recorded having 327 teachers.
The council also says that while it looks for new teachers to use remote teaching methods “no teacher has been, or will be, forced to deliver online”.
For its part, the EIS says it also wants to ensure “an equitable choice...for all of our pupils” but it argues that the plans minimise the role of the teacher and that ensuring a broad curriculum does not just have to be about “digital learning” and “being left in a room without a registered teacher”. This is a reference to the fact that - although registered teachers will deliver the remote lessons - the council has only committed to ensuring classes receiving remote lessons are supervised by “an appropriate adult”, as opposed to a teacher.
The union has also attacked the lack of consultation over the plans. EIS local association secretary Karen Graham said in April: “Locally we have not been consulted on these proposals at all, despite the fact they seek to alter our members’ terms and conditions including workplace location.”
The suspicion that changes to education delivery are taking place for budgetary reasons, as opposed to educational reasons, is understandable.
In the Western Isles, the council insists that consultation has taken place and that changes were agreed back in 2019 and are “the culmination of nearly three years work”.
But recent years have been dominated by the pandemic and, clearly, teachers on the ground around Scotland often feel that changes are being done to them, not with them. And the Western Isles consultative ballot on industrial action shows that - certainly in this part of Scotland - it is not just a minority of school staff that feel this way.
In many ways, it doesn’t matter if the Western Isles Council believes it has communicated its plans well - teachers are telling them they have been blindsided. The authority needs to get them onside if they want to deliver their vision.
Emma Seith is a senior reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith
