Home Learning: IT Provision

What steps he is taking to ensure that all pupils have laptops and internet access when required to learn from home.

What steps he is taking to ensure that all pupils have laptops and internet access when required to learn from home.

We are making over half a million laptops and tablets available for disadvantaged students across the country by the end of the year. Since September, over 100,000 devices have been delivered to schools, building on over 220,000 delivered in the summer term. Where children lack access to the internet at home, we have also delivered over 50,000 routers.

Knowsley is one of the most deprived boroughs in the country and has had its allocation of laptops cut from 1,065 to 282 since the Government’s 80% cut in allocations. Fifty-six of the 61 schools in Knowsley have at least one bubble self-isolating, and one primary school in Halewood in my constituency which currently has 60 children self-isolating has been allocated six laptops. Half the children in that school have no access to technology at home, so how exactly are headteachers meant to comply with the Government’s regulation that schools must provide immediate access to high-quality remote learning for pupils who are self-isolating?

Any school where pupils are self-isolating, and which has disadvantaged students who do not have access to a computer, is able to contact the Department to acquire extra computers beyond those allocated. I am told that it takes 48 working hours to have those laptops delivered to the school. In the context of significant global demand for laptops and tablets, we have updated the process of allocating those devices to schools to align more accurately with the number of students typically self-isolating. That will help to ensure that those who are self-isolating and need a laptop or a tablet are able to receive one.

Teachers in Coventry South have stressed to me the importance of pupils having access to computers at home, but many children from working-class communities do not have that. One school in my constituency, Ernesford Grange Community Academy, found that 12% of students—101 pupils—struggle to access a device at home. The Government introduced a new duty on schools to provide online learning, but the next day they slashed the allocation of laptops. Ernesford Grange saw its allocation fall from 111 to just 22, so will the Minister today guarantee that every school in Coventry has the laptops that their students need?

The allocation is to schools that are not necessarily sending children home to self-isolate—that is, to all schools, whether or not their pupils are self-isolating. We need to make sure that there is a computer—a laptop—for every disadvantaged pupil who does not have one and who is self-isolating, and because we made that decision, we are able to ensure that every pupil in those circumstances will receive a computer. All they have to do is phone the Department for Education, and they will have the computer, if they fulfil the eligibility criteria, within 48 hours of putting in that call.