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That this House has considered support for pupils’ education during school closures.
May I congratulate you, Dame Angela, on your new status, which is well deserved? Thank you for chairing the debate this morning. Yesterday, it looked as though it might not proceed because of the uncertainty over Westminster Hall debates, so I thank the House authorities and all the staff for being present here today to enable this sitting to happen. I hope that good sense will prevail later today over future arrangements.
I start by paying tribute to the extraordinary professionalism and commitment of the teaching staff and senior leadership teams in all our local schools and colleges. Like our health professionals, they are very much frontline workers and have worked relentlessly during the past 10 months. In today’s debate, it is essential that we recognise the importance of schools in addressing the inequality gap.
It is estimated that in the first lockdown some 575 million learning days were lost; the average loss was 65 days per pupil. All of us, having been through the education system, can think back to those days and recall a particular piece of information being imparted by a teacher and how that registered with us. We can also think of the days that we missed when others attended school and what we subsequently learned from them. We felt a sense of loss that we were not there to participate, so the fact that children and young people could have lost 65 days is of course quite significant for their future development.
The Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, concluded in her report in December that just five days had been lost on average across schools in the autumn term, but in some places it may have been up to 10 days. Certainly in Warwickshire, primary schools on average saw 92% attendance, state secondary schools averaged 82% and special schools averaged 80%. But just looking at the autumn term, we see indications quite early on that the trends were concerning. By the week ending 16 October, some 400,000 children were off school, with 50,000 estimated to have covid and the remainder self-isolating, and by the last week of November, 1 million children were out of school. At one secondary school in my constituency, just 63% were physically present.
May I also add my congratulations to you, Dame Angela, on becoming a dame? I did not know until just now. I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me a chance to intervene. Does he not agree that in rural constituencies such as mine in Strangford, where broadband connection is a massive issue, steps need to be taken to ensure that every child has access to stable connections to be able to learn remotely, and, if not, there must be a place for them in schools with functioning broadband? If we have to have an alternative, we need a system in place that enables that to happen.
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who always makes such valid points. I will cover that issue in a moment, but he is absolutely right. Access to broadband internet is an essential provision and should be a part of our critical infrastructure so that every household has it. Whether someone is working or studying from home, it is as important as getting gas, electricity or water to the household.
It has been clear from the outset that with the majority of children removed from school and college settings, there is a huge challenge in delivering educational learning in terms of both channel and approach, both from the delivery and the receiving end. According to Ofcom, up to 1.78 million children in the UK—about 9%—do not have access to a laptop, desktop or tablet at home. Almost 900,000 of those live in a household with just a mobile internet connection.
According to the education charity Teach First, four in five schools with the poorest pupils are hit the hardest and do not have enough devices and internet access to ensure that those self-isolating can continue to learn. However, recent Government announcements have been more positive, including that on 560,000 laptops and tablets, and a further 300,000 were announced yesterday. That is welcome. Perhaps the Minister will confirm the Department’s total cumulative number since March and April against the objective of 1.78 million.
The move by Three UK, followed by British Telecom, Vodafone and many others, to provide free data and unlimited broadband in support of the hardware is also very welcome and should be applauded. But why did it take the Government so long? Why did they dither and delay when the need was there from March last year? The initial announcement in April, when the Government stated that they would seek to ensure that disadvantaged pupils would benefit from free laptops or tablets, was immediately challenged by the Good Law Project, a legal campaign group, which said that the numbers announced were a “drop in the ocean”. The group went on to say that it found the lack of details about the scheme troubling as only a small subset of pupils would benefit.
The news stories this morning were full of the value of the voucher scheme and of the food that has been delivered to children, saying that it does not have the necessary vitamins and nutrients. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that that should be looked at to ensure that the vouchers and the food stuffs that are going out satisfy the child and give them the nourishment that they need?
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am about to come on to that point. The figures quoted in the media in the last 24 hours, about the profiteering that is taking place by some of the companies that have moved into the sector, are obscene. The claim is that the food has a value of £30, when in fact people could pick it up for £5 to £10.
The Child Poverty Action Group and Children North East echoed the call for cash payments. In research conducted by the charities, 81% said that direct payments worked better than grab bags or vouchers. When it comes to grab bags, or “hampers”, as they are now euphemistically known, there has been yet another shocking revelation about the company Chartwells, which has been providing food bags for £30, when the content would barely register a fiver or a tenner at the till, and the association of some people with that business and BlackRock.
Speaking to local schools, families are desperate and the schools are angry that the Government have not acted faster. As one headteacher put it to me:
“The Government communications have been poor. They knew schools were shutting, so why have plans not been made for free school meals?”
He was on a call with 20 other headteachers across the region and they were all of the same view. Certainly, some believe that the Edenred scheme worked fairly satisfactorily by comparison.
I would love to spend more time on the exam situation, but the position in which colleges and schools found themselves at the beginning of this term, particularly in regard to vocational subjects and BTEC exams, challenged them. They felt let down by the Department for Education. There are real concerns among students, as well as schools and teaching staff across the board, about the plans for the summer exams and how they will be measured against their learning performance.
I, too, congratulate you, Dame Angela, on becoming a dame. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this important debate.
If 1870 is remembered as the start of universal elementary education and 1944 for secondary education for all, then 2021 must be remembered as the year that online standards for education were set. If schools are to be closed and pupils are to be at home, they need devices, reliable network coverage and a secure platform for schooling to be delivered. We need a set curriculum, oversight and support for pupils, and a structured feedback loop from pupils to teachers. If standards are not set, this generation of political leaders and educationalists will be failing to live up to not only the laws of the land, but the educational path that this country has set for its children for over 150 years. There cannot be lockdowns and school closures with no full-time alternatives at the ready.
The Government have taken steps. Laptops are going to pupils, guidance is in place and there are independent educational providers coming forward—Oak National Academy, BrainPOP, Creativebug and the BBC—but there is not a comprehensive system in place.
A survey conducted in the last week by the Sutton Trust has reported today that only one in 10 teachers feels that their pupils have adequate access to laptops. A similar percentage feel that their pupils have adequate access to the internet. We have falling standards and a division in provision. The National Foundation for Educational Research found the average learning lost for all pupils was three months, but that more than 50% of pupils in the most deprived areas had lost four months or more. They also said that while 1% of pupils in the wealthiest areas had lost an estimated six months in effective learning due to the lockdown, in the poorest areas more than 10 times as many were affected as badly.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela. I, too, congratulate you on becoming a dame in the new year’s honours, which was very well deserved. I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing the debate and on his opening remarks, which covered all the issues that I believe need to be addressed. I also thank and congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on their work on this issue.
This is an urgent issue, and one that many colleagues have been talking about since the start of lockdown. Just yesterday I heard from one of my headteachers, who said that she was still waiting for the 114 laptops that the school had ordered and that were due to arrive last Wednesday. That is despite assurances given to Members of Parliament that laptops should arrive within 48 hours of being ordered. It is clear that the Government have inexplicably failed to plan ahead, once again putting kids last, not first, in this pandemic.
I am also disappointed that the Government seemingly took their foot off the accelerator in supporting kids to learn at home, following the easing of lockdown. They had a woefully slow start in March, which is on public record, with only 51,000 of the 200,000 laptops promised in March delivered by the end of May. I had to put in a freedom of information request to find that out. That was compounded by chaos in the supply of free school meals during lockdown, and a lack of guidance for teachers and support for parents.
Roll the clock forward nine months and it appears, on one level, that not much has changed. Incremental progress has been made, but it is utterly piecemeal and still far too confused. That has continued to be a hallmark of this Government. While the Department for Education should be making administrative decisions with clarity and forward planning, it instead lurches from crisis to crisis. It is not an excuse to say that the new variant took us by surprise, because a variant was expected. The NHS had sought to plan ahead; the rest of the Government clearly had not.
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela, especially as it is your first time in the Chair—your opening night. It is a real pleasure to be here. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for securing this timely and important debate. I must say that it was unclear whether we were going to have the debate, but for the sake of my young constituents who are struggling with home learning, I am grateful that we went ahead.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the teachers, the teaching assistants, the heads, the parents, the BBC and others for their fantastic online lessons—all supporting our children to get an education during this new lockdown. Teachers have had to redesign lesson plans at the last minute and get to grips with a new way of teaching, while maintaining standards. Although many children are still going to school—the children of key workers and others—there are thousands back at home with their parents, potentially without resources to learn.
We know that the digital divide is real, and the lockdown has identified that inequality. Many of the most disadvantaged children rely on schools and libraries to access the internet. With those closed, children and young people are now struggling to get online. The need is urgent, and I reiterate the point made by the Sutton Trust: just one in 10 schools across the country says that its pupils have access to technology. It is urgent, and it is a crisis.
As a young girl growing up on a council estate in Batley, on free school meals, I definitely would have been one of those youngsters who did not have the tech. I know the impact it would have had on my prospects. This is about lost potential. I definitely would not be standing in this place if I had had to scramble around for tech or share a mobile phone with my sister, my mum and my dad. This is a crisis for this generation.
It is not only councils that have stepped up to the plate, but community organisations in every region and constituency—none more so than the Dons Local Action Group, the AFC Wimbledon supporters who have supplied more than 1,000 laptops during the lockdown.
There is no greater champion of access to tech than my hon. Friend. We are all enormously grateful for the work she has done, the letters she has written and the pressure she has put on the Government, so I thank her for that.
This is absolutely about social mobility. There is a correlation between children being on free school meals and their access to tech. There are more than 62,113 children on free school meals across West Yorkshire, so it is evident that the need is great, but it did not have to be that way. The Education Secretary and his Department knew that this crisis was coming. The Minister will probably point to the mutation, which caught us all by surprise, but another lockdown was predictable and scientists raised the alarm long before the new variant was identified.
Our children need care, but they also need resources. Our families need practical support. Schools need timely, realistic guidelines. We need an Education Secretary who is on top of his brief, but so far we have seen the Government continue to fail the children of Batley and Spen and West Yorkshire, whose futures and destinies depend on their leadership.
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela, and I congratulate you on your damehood. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for securing this important debate.
I pay tribute to all the schools in my constituency and to the two local authorities, South Tyneside and Gateshead Councils, which reacted quickly to ensure that children and families are as supported as possible during the latest schools closure. I of course pay tribute to all the parents and carers, including my wife, who are home schooling their children at this very difficult time.
However, schools and families still face huge challenges in ensuring that every student has individual access to reliable and high-quality digital devices and the internet. This is, of course, not a new issue. The digital divide existed prior to the pandemic and left many children struggling to complete homework. The pandemic has highlighted the digital divide and other inequalities on a national scale, and effective action must now be taken to address that wide-reaching educational inequality.
Although this debate about digital exclusion among young people, alongside other things, is vital, let us not be in any doubt that it alone will deal with the deep-seated inequalities that having no face-to-face teaching creates. Online is no substitute for many, which is why it is vital that the Government ensure that pupils have guaranteed face-to-face contact time with their teachers online. Research conducted by the Child Poverty Action Group and Children North East in May 2020 showed that school closures further exposed and exacerbated the gaps in education caused by low income, and left children unable to access or engage in learning because they did not have adequate resources or an appropriate set-up at home.
It seems a long time ago now that a demand for everyone in the UK to have a right to access the internet, irrespective of income, was considered by some to be “broadband communism”. Fast forward a year and many children across the country are not able to gain access to laptops and the internet when it is so desperately needed. That is no surprise when Ofcom estimates that between 1.14 million and 1.78 million children in the UK—around 9%—do not have home access to a laptop, desktop or tablet, and more than 880,000 children live in a household with only a mobile internet connection.
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful point. Does she agree that, with the closure of so many libraries in our communities, we easily forget just how important access to information and knowledge is, and how so many in our communities are being isolated from that access? That is why the provision my hon. Friend is describing is so crucial.
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Of course that has a disproportionate impact, as the Children’s Commissioner said. It has considerable consequences for children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that is particularly concerning when the UK has one of the worst levels of inequality in the developed world, as highlighted by the United Nations interlocutor in his report back in 2019. We have 4.2 million children living in poverty, 600,000 more than in 2010, according to the Child Poverty Action Group, so even before the pandemic, UK schools faced considerable challenges.
With the introduction of the third lockdown, we are seeing more children being sent to school than attended during the first lockdown. The figures that we have show attendance of between a quarter and a third of pupils in school; that compares with 10% to 15% in the first lockdown. A main driver has been the change to the definition of what constitutes a critical worker, or what is necessary attendance, putting schools in the difficult position of having to assess this on a case-by-case basis. Parents are also having to make decisions based on financial demands rather than the guidance. A headteacher in my constituency believes it is an absolute scandal. They quoted the Department for Education, which states that
“we are reducing overall social contact across…the country rather than individually by each institution”,
which is leading to the overloading of our schools and their acting almost as care workers for younger people to support that.
The much higher attendance rates have resulted in staff being in school when they should be teaching from home. If teachers are delivering face-to-face learning to a blended age group of pupils and are expected to provide digital content, they are effectively doubling their workload. In turn, schools are having staffing issues due to illness and the need to self-isolate, and often the staff themselves face childcare issues. The other principal driver of the increased numbers in school is that those without laptops or space to study are now eligible to attend school. That has led to unions such as the National Association of Head Teachers highlighting how the high numbers will simply undermine the purpose and effectiveness of the shutdown itself. That is why online learning and the tools to enable it are so crucial.
Back in June I raised the issue with the Minister’s Department in a written question and I followed it up in the Chamber. In reply to my written question I was told that 200,000 laptops and tablets had been ordered on 19 April. However, a Government document entitled “Devices and 4G wireless routers data: Ad-hoc Notice: Laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers for disadvantaged and vulnerable children: progress data”—Members may not have seen that report—stated:
“The first devices were ordered on 15th May, and the first devices were dispatched on 18th May.”
It is still not clear to me what happened, and which was true. Was it 19 April or 15 May? It certainly seems that the Government were slow to react to the challenge and to recognise the ongoing need.
At the same time, in Warwickshire, I was told that 1,463 laptops had been requested, but that by early July only 45 had been received. By 1 June the Government had certainly missed their target of delivering 230,000 laptops and tablets. On 21 October the Secretary of State said that he would deliver 500,000 laptops, noting that 200,000 had already been delivered, but by early November the Government had announced that they had slashed the allocation of Government-promised laptops for the poorest and most vulnerable children across the country by a staggering 80%. My question to the Minister is why the number was reduced. Why was that announcement made?
As I say, more recent announcements have been more positive, but for schools in my constituency there is clearly a long way to go. In Warwick and Leamington, on average, 17% of pupils do not have access to digital equipment or broadband for home working. In the absence of Government support, 83% of schools, according to my own survey, have provided laptops out of their own funds. Those are hard-pressed funds in schools. One primary school that will remain nameless confided that it has almost 50 children without devices, and has received just four in total.
Of course it is all too easy to think of the issue as about purely the supply of laptops, but even when a household has a device and internet access that does not mean that the pupil can make use of them, because of such factors as low parental computer literacy, parents who work from home needing to use the device, school- age siblings also needing to use it, or simply access to broadband capacity. Perhaps there may also be a lack of access to printers or other hardware in the household. That is all understandable. For many there is simply the problem of broadband or mobile internet access, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said. In particular, there are certain buildings in remote rural areas where mobile signals are limited.
Finally there is the question of content support. It is worth highlighting this week’s positive move by the BBC to deliver an education offer to children, teachers and parents through CBBC and “BBC Bitesize Daily”, while BBC2 will provide programming aimed at supporting the GCSE curriculum. That is all immensely welcome and will complement greatly the online teaching that is being facilitated through Oak National Academy and other providers such as the website Hungry Little Minds. Naturally, there is also a need to deliver online teaching, which in turn leads to demand in relation to training needs for the delivery of the new channel for learning.
Many schools are also reporting significant financial pressures. In the survey that I conducted across Warwick and Leamington during the autumn term it was apparent that there were immediate and significant costs—operational costs, but also a need for capital support. As for operating costs, a couple of primary schools faced additional costs of £20,000, but the average figure across the board was something like £13,000, or £1,400 per month—the additional cost of sanitising, cleaning, and ensuring that the physical environment is safe and usable for pupils and teaching staff alike. However, all schools reported a significant unmet staffing need because of budget limitations, and 83% stated that they had faced staffing shortages.
Schools also said that there was a greater need for them with respect to their responsibility for protecting children and ensuring their general wellbeing, and while mental health is of course a particular and obvious concern, there is also the issue of the increased risk of harm to children. According to a report for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in the first lockdowns there was a 22% increase in the number of counselling sessions relating to physical abuse, and a threefold increase in the number of Childline counselling sessions per week about child sexual abuse within the family. Those are all areas where we need to provide greater support for pupils, young people and teaching staff.
There have been pressures on school leadership teams, who faced the responsibility of undertaking flow testing of pupils and additional tasks alongside the ongoing pressures they already have. I highlight the need for more support for special schools, which face huge pressures having to teach face-to-face in intense environments, and where there is a real need for more financial support, for additional staffing and, I would advocate, for the vaccination of teaching staff and pupils.
On the point about nurseries, the transmission data, from October 2020, is outdated. According to the Office for National Statistics, transmission among zero to five-year-olds is now the same as among five to nine-year-olds. Funding is needed to support our nurseries.
I will move on to the situation with free school meal vouchers. One of the implications of pupils not being in school is for their health and welfare while they are at home, possibly alone, where many will go without a decent hot meal that would have ordinarily been provided by the school. That is why the provision of free school meals has been so important, in particular via the vouchers during the first wave. It is surprising that the Government and, dare I say, their Back Benchers voted not to continue with that provision in subsequent holidays and into the future, until there was the Marcus Rashford-inspired U-turn.
With so many pupils out of school again, the need to provide the equivalent of free school meals is significant and many schools are urging that cash payments be made. The Child Poverty Action Group and Children North East echo that call for cash payments as a replacement for free school meals, as they know what children need and that allows choice, accessibility, discretion and safety, all of which are valued by families.
Finally, I want to look at protection for teaching staff. We talk about support for pupils, but we need support and protection for teaching staff. There is a need for vaccination and all staff in schools, including support staff, must be a much higher priority. I raised that on 3 December, and again on 30 December, with the Secretary of State.
In September, a GMB union internal survey of over 600 teaching assistants showed that 55% of them said they did not feel safe at work. Elsewhere, Unison has highlighted that the hardest hit are likely to be school support staff, as they are often agency workers, older, disproportionately black, Asian or of mixed ethnicity and come from more disadvantaged backgrounds. If there is the political will for schools to remain open—of course, we all want them to reopen as early as possible—school staff must be placed at a higher priority than they are presently.
The past year has been far from academic, Dame Angela. The support needed for pupils’ education is considerable and complex, but it is not mission impossible. I am afraid that the Government’s work through the course of the pandemic has, on occasion, been of little merit. Perhaps it could be described, in its own right, like coursework: late submission, no shows, confusion and, in the eyes of school staff and governors, a tragic failure of leadership from the Secretary of State. This generation of children must not lose out any longer. These are some of the most important days of their lives, which are precious to their development and the realisation of their potential. The Government must dig deep, and not short-change their long-term future.
If we believe in social mobility—and I certainly do—then this is not good enough. We need to act to support our pupils, and at pace. Education is the great equaliser. We have to adapt and adapt quickly. I say that because I look at how businesses have adapted to cater for their customers and upgrade their capability. Online demand has increased by over 100% in retail and for online video subscriptions. Microsoft Teams has grown from 20 million users in November 2019 to 115 million daily active users in October 2020.
If businesses can develop, adapt and meet the need, then schools must do exactly the same thing: they must react with speed to give pupils the education that they need. Like it or not, online education is here to stay, and once developed it could become an exceptional resource with wider uses, such as allowing children to catch up at home if they have been ill or helping to cater to the 60,000 pupils who are taught at home—that number leapt up by 13% in 2018-19. It could even support pupils who have an exceptional capability in a subject to surge ahead.
Where do we begin? We have to get teachers, unions, Ofsted and the Government to come together to set out that standard, because if unions, teachers and local councils are arguing for pupils not to return to school, and with the Government’s announcement of a third national lockdown, they must come together to provide for a full, accessible online curriculum. There is joint responsibility; therefore, joint action is needed. The Government need to reinstate their manifesto pledge of 1 gigabit capability for everyone by 2025, so that pupils, irrespective of where they live, can get a proper online connection.
In 1969, the Open University was created to give open access to higher education, increase social mobility and support the economy. We need a similar game-changing moment now in online education, where we could become a global leader. The Open University now qualifies as one of the world’s largest universities and has a £3 billion benefit to the UK economy. It is time we took a leap forward in online education, and 2021 needs to be the year that happens. Will the Minister meet me and my Blue Collar Conservatism colleagues to set out the new online curriculum that needs to happen, and the online connection and devices that need to be given, to ensure that social mobility happens and that we have an education fit for all?
I do not want to hear today from the Government—I am sorry to be stern about this—about what has gone on that is to be applauded: the Oak National Academy, BBC provision, and Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and others putting on learning options. Much of that learning also has to be focused and directed by teachers, and it has to be accessible. To do that, we need laptops and broadband sufficient for every child, not every household, because every child has to be online and has to be able to learn for as many hours as they need.
We need an honest and clear conversation about what is not going well, and how the Government need to tackle the remaining gaps at the speed and scale needed. First, the Government must have a proper plan to support hybrid and remote learning, because this issue is not going away. There has to be a long-term and sustainable solution for the provision of laptops and devices to all children who need them. That includes the broadband connectivity that will be required not just during the lockdown, but on an ongoing basis. The virus is going to be with us for at least this year and maybe well into the next academic year.
When I say every child, I mean every primary and secondary school pupil. It may be that they cannot get access because a sibling is using the home computer or laptop to study, or a parent might be using it to work at home. Those are the same families that might have used free wi-fi in libraries but, under the current circumstances and conditions, cannot do so. Children are also on cycles of lockdown and self-isolation. We have seen that all the way through since September. As many as 20% could have been off in one day due to the need to self-isolate.
Catching up is also vital, and I congratulate the Sutton Trust and others on the work they have done. Research by the National Foundation for Educational Research showed that at the start of last term, poorer pupils were three months behind on their learning, showing that the digital divide plays a huge part in poorer children falling behind. As well as keeping up, they also have to catch up. They need the time to be able to study in order to do that.
Secondly, laptop support must be at scale and of quality. I am surprised at the number of complaints from teachers about the spec and quality of laptops they have received, and the difficulties they had in reimaging them and getting their children online. Will the Minister outline the quality of provision the Government are providing, the tests and criteria they have set out, and how they are monitoring complaints received from schools, in order that those issues can be ironed out for further cycles?
The benefits are clear and it is heartening to read what children have to say. Last April, in the gap between the start of lockdown and laptops starting to arrive, local charity Hounslow’s Promise started a scheme to secure business and individual donations of laptops. That project is ongoing, working with the Hounslow Education Partnership of headteachers.
I want to quote Victoria Eadie, chief executive officer of the Tudor Park Trust, who has worked on the project from the start:
“During the first lockdown when we rolled out the first computers in April we saw significantly increased engagement in learning by pupils who previously had no access… They went from no engagement to medium or full engagement. It made a huge difference.”
The feedback from young people has also had an impact and has led to the project continuing. One pupil said:
“Before I received a laptop from school, I was struggling to complete work that was being sent by post. This meant it was difficult for me to complete my work and receive feedback. Once I received my laptop it was easier to do my work and access help online. I am very grateful for the laptop; my mum is also very grateful as my little brother also uses it for his learning.”
Another pupil said:
“It has been absolutely brilliant. I was stressed because I couldn’t do the work as I only had my phone. Now I can do the home learning.”
A third pupil said:
“This is a life saver because I travel between mum and dad and this makes it possible for me to keep up with my schoolwork in either home.”
Thirdly, we need a proper plan for connectivity. We need to tackle data poverty. That is not an unknown inequality, yet it is another social injustice that the pandemic has shone a light on, dividing rich and poor, and haves and have nots, whether young or old. Children who are unable to learn from and with their parents are learning far more slowly than their peers.
I believe there is a lot more to do to ensure that there is a sustainable solution. I appreciate and am grateful for the support from Three and others, which are now coming together with the Government to provide some free access to broadband during this period, but there has to be a solution that is ongoing and sustainable. We need a proper national schools connectivity scheme at low or no cost, so that schools can be confident that they will be able to support all their pupils to get online.
This is indeed an unsettling time for children, and it would be hugely beneficial and easily achievable for tech firms and broadband suppliers to help children stay connected to their school and their friends. Not only will it support their learning; it will positively impact on their confidence and wellbeing.
Only last night, I received an email from Andrew Barker, a parent at my old school, Windmill Primary School, which is an outstanding, excellent school with great leadership. He asked whether I could help him and other parents source 20 recycled, used or spare devices for children who might not have access at home to learning and the devices to support it. Andrew, a software company owner, has also offered his tech support to help the school and teachers. I thank him and so many other parents around the country who are using their skills to support teachers—something that is desperately needed. As we have just heard, Ofcom and SHINE, the Leeds-based charity, have said that 1.78 million children lack access to a laptop, desktop computer or tablet. That is a seriously depressing number, given that children were already lagging behind their peers before covid. Now, after five months of missed education, they will be even further behind.
It is not just about the tech, is it? It is also about supporting the educators, the teachers, the teaching assistants and the mums, dads and carers, many of whom may not be natural teachers or may have a job to do at home while also trying to home school their children. They will need support. Leaving pupils without tech and their parents without support means the deprivation gap will only widen. Kids will suffer not just in terms of their education, prospects and future; potentially, their mental health will suffer too. A telling admission of failure was when the Education Secretary told children that if they did not have laptops at home, they could go to school, whereas the Government’s plan was to close schools to all children except vulnerable children and those of key workers.
Of course, the pledge to deliver 750,000 laptops to families without a suitable device is extremely welcome, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating—those children should have had them already. We cannot forget either that Government deliveries to special schools have not been fit for purpose. The Government have offered desktop computers to children who are not mobile and able to use desktops. Those children need tablets or smaller devices.
Councils around the country have had to step in where the Government have failed to deliver. My local authority, Kirklees, has distributed 3,857 devices since lockdown, but it decided that that was just not enough and allocated its own substantial funds to deliver tech for schools.