Virtual classrooms offer equitable learning experiences for remote and rural students

A new virtual learning program brings expert-level tuition to regional and remote Catholic high schools, helping senior students overcome the “tyranny of distance”. 

The Virtual Learning Collaborative (VLC) uses Microsoft Teams and OneNote Class Notebook to deliver courses that would otherwise have been denied to final-year students because of a lack of qualified teachers and resources at their schools. 

Pioneered by Catholic Education Canberra and Goulburn, the learning program launched this year. It is now being used by around 30 students in NSW and the ACT and there are plans for ongoing expansion. 

Virtual Learning Coordinator for Catholic Education in those regions, Wendy Mockler, says that without the VLC, some students would not be able to finish their high school education. 

Every student in regional Australia should have access to the same quality of education as their metro peers. 

Among Catholic schools in NSW, 204 (or 35 per cent) are located outside major cities, including 12 schools in remote NSW and four in very remote NSW. 

Schools in regional and remote areas are generally smaller, educate students from less socio-economically advantaged communities, have higher proportions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, have less experienced teachers and greater difficulty attracting and retaining teachers and principals, require higher levels of funding, have lower educational outcomes, and are often educating in towns with declining populations, according to a submission from the Catholic Education Commission, NSW in 2017. 

“Students from those schools are less likely to go to university and, later, less likely to access higher wages. So, there’s a lower socio-economic outcome for students from those areas,” says Mockler. 

“Pretty well. Nobody past the Blue Mountains studies economics,” says Mockler, pointing to the lack of specialist teachers. 

Some regional and remote high schools do not have the resources to go all the way to year 12. However, Mockler says the VLC program has enabled two schools to start offering the HSC once more: McAuley Catholic Central School at Tumut and St Anne’s Central School at Temora. 

The apps required to run the remote program in schools are available as part of Microsoft 365. 

Not only do the virtual classrooms offer course materials, but students benefit from teachers who are at the top of their fields.