Learning during lockdown and digital inclusion progress in Highland

21st January 2021

The Council's ICT in Learning team have been working hard to continue to support our school communities as we deliver remote learning to all children and young people across Highland.

Chair of Education committee, Cllr John Finlayson said: "I want to thank all of our staff in Education who have worked incredibly hard to ensure that our school communities are receiving support and a quality education experience. This thank you extends to parents and carers who support our learners and also our central education officers for continuing to develop our online learning platforms, to our teaching staff who are delivering education remotely to all of our pupils, and to our staff involved in ensuring our settings remain as safe as possible for our children of key workers and vulnerable pupils who are accessing school settings.

"We are very proud of our online learning in Highland, which has also received recognition at national level, as this is something we have been developing since 2015. We are committed to furthering our ICT in Learning strategy and increasing digital inclusion in our local communities".

Support for pupils

We recently announced two significant partnerships to help support our children and young people. We have partnered with Text Help so that every pupil and teacher in our schools now has access to Read&Write software , a literacy tool which can be used on any device, funded through the Connecting Scotland grant.

We have also partnered with Tree of Knowledge to provide mental health and wellbeing support

This online learning platform addresses some of the challenges of the pandemic and develops positive mental health.

In addition to these resources, our dedicated team of central officers provide skills, tools resources and safeguarding and online safety resources on our digital platforms.

Support for parents

It is important that our parents and carers are also supported while pupils are learning remotely. Our parents and carers have access to recorded training and how to use Google for Education tools and resources. There are also upcoming parent engagement sessions to explain how to use Read&Write software, as well as question and answer sessions to support remote learning at home.

Our staff have developed a helpful parental guide to remote learning to provide additional advice.

We are also connecting Parent Councils across Highland with new Gmail addresses, using the G-Suite Tools from Google Enterprise.

Further support, skills, curriculum resources and updates can be found on our digital schools hub.