Three small schools in this atoll share one English teacher over a video link, and this school has her for six periods a week across grades three to six.
How it works. A screen and a camera at each end, a timetable agreed between the three schools, and an adult from this school in the room for every lesson, always, without exception. The children can see her and she can see all of them. Work is set, photographed and sent, marked, and sent back with her writing on it.
What it does well. Grammar, reading comprehension, vocabulary and listening are taught properly by somebody who studied the subject, which is a great deal better than the same lessons taught by a teacher covering a subject they did not train in. The children like her and they know her, and she has visited each school twice.
What it cannot do. Speaking practice in a class of twenty two over a link is poor. Noticing the child at the back who has stopped following is almost impossible from a screen, which is why the adult in the room matters and why that adult writes her a note after every lesson. And a link that fails, which it does about one lesson in twelve, is a lost period rather than a rearranged one.
So the arrangement is a good answer to a bad situation rather than a good situation. We would rather have an English teacher living on this island. Until there is one, this is much better than nothing and we have said so to the families in every year it has run.