News


`Virtual' primary school is UK first

by Paul R Taylor
17/ 8/2006

HEADTEACHER Dom Knowles has a power that other teachers can only dream about.

At the click of a button, he can "turn off" unruly and disruptive pupils and teach in blissful silence.

The 41-year-old has set up Britain's first virtual school to offer lessons from primary school through to GCSEs and beyond, from his home in Stretford.

Briteschool, which is short for British E-school, opens its virtual doors next month.

Eight qualified teachers use microphones, text chat and presentation software to deliver live lessons in maths, science, French, history and geography at GCSE level.

Dom, who taught at two other online UK schools before setting up Briteschool, said: "The lessons are basically an online telephone call. We have the capacity to use video conferencing but that tends to use too much band width and the quality drops.

"Teacher and the pupils have a microphone, but the teacher controls it so if any pupil interrupts too much we can simply turn them off."

The teachers teach from their own homes around the country, with up to 15 pupils a time allowed into the high school cyberspace classrooms or 12 in the primary classrooms.

"We broadly follow the British National Curriculum. The online primary school offers support for home-educated upper primary school children at Key Stage 2 in maths, literacy and other subjects.

"We're also opening the BriteNightSchool, which offers English as a foreign language, digital photography and the European Computer Driving Licence.

"Many of our pupils are home educated, and many live abroad with ex-pat parents who want them to have a British education."

A full year at the school costs £2,280 per pupil.

Visit www.briteschool.co.uk.


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