Beginning next March, Canterbury Christ Church University will offer students the chance to train as secondary school teachers using an online programme developed with Hibernia College.

The iTeach programme will train up to 150 graduates a year as maths, physics and chemistry teachers, with most of the lectures delivered online to students' homes.

The course lasts for 18 months including 15 weeks practical teaching experience.

The UK deal is a major breakthrough for Hibernia founder, Sean Rowland, who faced down bitter opposition to his plans to sell online teacher training in Ireland.

The five local teacher training colleges campaigned to block Hibernia's arrival, claiming that e-learning for primary school teachers was "bordering on the reckless". The five colleges told an Oireachtas committee that Hibernia posed "a significant threat to the quality of teacher education, to the professional status of teaching and, ultimately, the well being of Irish primary school children".

Nevertheless, Noel Dempsey, as minister for education in 2003, gave Hibernia the go-ahead for online training of graduates, rather than school leavers, who want to become primary teachers.

Rowland said that Hibernia has now put more than 1,000 teachers through its hands and, when summer refresher courses are taken into account, has offered some form of online training to about one quarter of all primary teachers in the country.

E-learning is set to cause the same flak in the UK as it did here according to Sonia Blandford, dean of education at Canterbury Christ Church University. "Will it be controversial? Absolutely, " she said.

"Some will accuse us of dumbing down, which we're not, we're enhancing what we do already. We've always sought to be innovative. For example, we offer 33 different routes into teaching but, at the moment, they're all class based."

Rowland accuses the educational establishment of elitism, which thwarts the ambitions of many who would make good teachers.

"You'll always have people who sit on the stool of mediocrity and sip from the glass of begrudgery, " he says.

"We've been endorsed by the best and no world-class institution has ever criticised us."

E-learning is the only practical route into teaching for people deciding to make the move after they have already started working at something else, according to Rowland.

"It's the only way of attracting people from other professions or teachers who are out of the workforce, especially young mothers, back into the job, " he says. "We're seeing it in Ireland where our online courses have allowed thousands of people to become teachers. Many are in their 30s and they could not have afforded to take two years off work and then incur the prohibitive cost of moving to a teacher training college to study full time."

After investing 5m in course content and technology, Hibernia College turned the financial corner last year with profits of 56,000.

Accounts recently filed with the Companies Office show net liabilities of almost 1.8m at the end of January, slightly down from the same date in 2005. Its main asset is the 1.2m invested in developing online course content. The company had almost 380,000 in the bank.

The directors, led by Rowland, who owns 68% of the company, reported that Hibernia College has "a sound basis for an operationally and financially successful future", adding that its big investment in course content is generating "significant" revenues and cash receipts. The company's backers include millionaire property developer Bernard McNamara. Its academic credentials have been greatly boosted by the involvement of Tom Mitchell, former provost of Trinity College, as academic chairman.

Hibernia also offers masters programmes in pharmaceutical medicine, hospitality management and public administration.