Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many G4 routers have been supplied to schools in Garson and Halewood constituency to help families who do not have affordable broadband or data to access online learning during the January 2021 covid-19 lockdown.

The Government is investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services, including securing 1.3 million laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children and young people. Over 750,000 laptops and tablets had been delivered to schools, academy trusts and local authorities by the end of last week, nearly 140,000 of which had been delivered this month.

We have also provided over 54,000 4G wireless routers, with free data for the academic year so that children have access to remote education. Routers have been distributed to schools, academy trusts and local authorities, who are responsible for allocating them to the families that need them most. For this reason, figures on the number of routers provided at constituency level is not available.

The Department has also partnered with some of the UK’s leading mobile network operators to provide free data to disadvantaged families, which will support access to education resources, including Oak National Academy, and other websites.

Families will benefit from this additional data until July 2021. Schools are able to request free mobile data uplifts via the Get Help with Technology service.

A number of mobile network providers are also progressing the zero-rating of educational resources, such as Oak Academy and BBC Bitesize.