Edge Executive Director Olly Newton attends the two-day Island Youth Forum in the Caribbean.
In late September 2025, I was lucky enough to visit e-Sgoil in the beautiful Outer Hebrides, where I met Head of School Steven Graham and Richard Tarves, Business Manager and long-term member of our Island Education Network. e-Sgoil (e-school in Gaelic) was created in 2016 to tackle teacher shortages and the challenges around providing education across scattered island communities. What began as a practical local solution has since grown to serve students across Scotland. Coming in the same week as this year’s Virtual Island Summit, visiting Stornoway gave me an opportunity to get to know e-Sgoil more closely and see what sets their approach apart.
e-Sgoil placed equity at the centre of its work from the start. Much of their focus is on supporting children who are missing from traditional education often for reasons around their mental health. e-Sgoil’s i-Sgoil programme allows for learners to be part of a live, interactive learning communitywith full pastoral support. With around 200 registered students, it demonstrates how digital solutions can effectively serve young people in complex circumstances, insights that could benefit similar initiatives elsewhere. In England, for example, Ofsted’s chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, has noted concerns about “unorthodox patterns of education”, while the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill includes proposals for greater oversight of home-schooling. While not all home-schooled children face additional needs, a good portion of them do. e-Sgoil offers a refreshingly constructive example of how we can deliver quality education to learners with additional needs in non-traditional environments.
Another unique thread of e-Sgoil’s work is language instruction. Over the decades, internet connectivity has contributed to the decline of many minority languages by exposing communities to dominant ones like English. Thanks to e-Sgoil, the same connectivity is now re-invigorating language education. Students across Scotland – including adult learners – now have opportunities to learn and study in Gaelic. This blueprint could be adapted to preserve indigenous languages elsewhere – remote islands and rural locations (Welsh border communities, for instance), or even diaspora populations in our cities. Similar work is underway on the Isle of Man, where there is a primary school teaching entirely in Manx, and on several Caribbean islands, which are working to raise the profile of Creole. Edge plans to feature some of this work through our future Island Education Network discussions.
e-Sgoil’s formal integration within its local authority structure has led to sophisticated employer engagement. Working alongside colleagues focused on apprenticeships and workforce development, this set-up supports Scotland’s Developing Young Workforce initiative and its emphasis on employability skills – an approach Edge has long championed.
The employability team within the local authority talks to small businesses about employment opportunities coming up over the next two to three years, allowing them to work backwards and create pathways for young people. For instance, they’ve identified significant construction projects coming to the Outer Hebrides, which will require quantity surveyors. As a result, young people have found online degree programmes to prepare them. The upshot is that young people can build careers without leaving the island, reducing brain-drain and meeting local economic needs. While this brokerage approach is perhaps easier in island communities, the principle could be adapted to workforce development in other areas where local authorities struggle to retain young talent - rural mainland communities, for example.
Overall, my visit to the Hebrides showed me that geographical isolation doesn’t necessarily equal educational disadvantage. Constraints can spark creativity. If you can’t easily recruit more teachers or send students to the nearest college, you have to think differently. Often that pressure creates something better than the mainstream offer. But we can all reap the benefits.