There are groups of children that do not attend school for a variety of reasons. Some may have medical conditions that make it difficult or impossible to attend school. Others might be teetering on the brink of exclusion, while some students just cannot face leaving the house to attend school. For some, many avenues and strategies have been attempted to engage them in the learning process, but sadly these have stalled or failed.  It was for these students that in September 2003, ConnectEd Online Learning was established, to find another way to engage and educate those students not able to attend school for whatever reason.

Many of these groups go under the umbrella title of the Hard to Reach and prior to the establishment of ConnectEd these students would have received home visits from teams of tutors based around Cambridgeshire. As one can appreciate, this was a costly and often a very frustrating way of delivering education to students. Time was limited, travelling costs rising and often teachers were repeating lessons throughout the week to students in various parts of the County of Cambridgeshire on an individual basis! Often tutors would arrive at homes to find the student out or refusing to open the door. For those with medical conditions, lesson times could be at times inappropriate to their medical needs and so were cancelled.

 Other ways had to be found to deliver a more effective learning package for those students out of school for whatever reason. The start of ConnectEd was small. A pilot group of 5 students, 1 teacher and a website area provided as part of a greater county pilot looking at developing communities on the web. The plan was that these students would have work sent to them via the dedicated web site, carry out this work and then submit it for marking, feedback and further work. The subjects were limited to the core subjects of English, Maths and Science. Students would continue to receive home visits but once every three weeks rather than weekly.  

Despite the many hurdles faced in that first year such as a total lack of knowledge as how to structure online courses, a website that relied on too much knowledge and was not intuitive and a gross lack of manpower, ConnectEd muddled on and the response from students was highly favourable. Not one drop out and lots of very positive feedback, many of the students being in favour of having greater control of their learning, being able to select when and where they do it rather than being told to.  

It was also apparent that, although this initial pilot group was drawn from those students with medical needs, ConnectEd could quite easily take on students from all those groups that had been identified as being ‘Hard to Reach’. Since then ConnectEd has worked with children throughout the county of Cambridgeshire, helping and supporting children who are either too ill to attend school or have other conditions that make attendance difficult. ConnectEd also works with students that have been or are at risk of exclusion, children from traveller and show folk communities and those children who need an alternative provision to their current placement.  As our role grew so did our ambition and desire to develop a true virtual learning environment for our students, in which they could take an active part, not only as learners but as community members. At this time I had three ambitions for our students: 

1. A dedicated and secure learning portal, which would engage students across the age range we were working with

1. To build up a team of dedicated online teachers, delivering the widest possible curriculum to our students, but always with the individual at the centre of the learning programme.

1. The ability to deliver live lessons to students across Cambridgeshire without staff having to spend hours travelling up and down the county!

 At this point it’s worth saying very clearly that I am not a learning platform, internet mad, highly knowledgeable online learning guru! I’m a class teacher with a primary background who happens to have an interest and a belief that there are many ways to learn and that failure at school is not failing to learn but not being in the right place to learn! (I hope that makes sense!). So, although I knew what I wanted I hadn’t much of a clue as to how to get it.  Thankfully there are others out there in web world that do and in our case it was a commercial group called Nisai (www.nisai.com). Working alongside Nisai we devised our Learning Portal based on Microsoft SharePoint. This came online in September 2006.  Behind it sits Microsoft Class Server via which task for students can be created and sent to groups or students and individuals and yet I can hear the groans from those talking about out of date technology. All I can say at this point is: 

• It works! It’s solid, hardly had any downtime and delivers the goods

• Student require very little training and because deliver and return of work is all within one area, they don’t have to worry about losing work etc

• It’s easy to use! We are all teachers, first and foremost! We might have a bit of a passing interest in HTML, SCORM and such like, but our main interest is delivering good, enjoyable and effective learning to a wide range of abilities and interests. I/We might have only a passing interest in how the thing works but for us it’s vital that it does….. and it does!

 Since its establishment ConnectEd has actively supported the learning of over 280 Cambridgeshire children from Year 7 (11 year olds) to Year 12 (16 year olds) to attain they best possible achievement. Currently those children working on the ConnectEd GCSE courses for English, Mathematics and Science have achieved a 100% success rate with 60% of students getting grades A to C across those subjects. For those not on the GCSE course we have a 100% success rate for students gaining Adult Literacy and Numeracy Levels 1 and 2 and CLAITS Levels 1 and 2. These high levels of results have been achieved often by pupils that have been out of the education system for a number of years, and yet with ConnectEd’s support have achieved, in many case, against great odds. 

ConnectEd is a truly virtual school. It has its own learning portal so students can access work as and when they are able. For those children at home suffering from conditions such as Chronic Fatigue, this ability to work when they feel well is of vital importance, allowing them to keep up with pupils in school and giving them a great sense of achievement. The work provided is developed by the dedicated ConnectEd teaching staff and so meets the needs of its own pupils and so is truly personalised learning.  

For the last two years, ConnectEd has been able to deliver live lessons to our students via the use of Nisai Virtual Classroom based on Ilinc technology.  ConnectEd’s virtual classroom allows pupils from all over Cambridgeshire to log on and be taught lessons that cover a range of subjects in Keystages 3 and 4. These are ‘live’ lessons! Pupils can interact with one another, take part in the lesson, and enjoy the best possible stimulus that this system can provide. Using such technology, ConnectEd has been able to double the hours provided to each student, yet still maintain face to face and human contact with its pupils.  Our students have been at the cutting edge of e-learning for so long that to them it is their way of learning. For many, ConnectEd has allowed them to achieve when once they were failing or were finding access to education difficult or impossible.   

Andy HannafordManager of ConnectEd Online Learning

Cambridgeshire EOTAS