Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) schools and (b) pupils in Enfield North have requested but not received (i) laptops and (ii) other technology required for remote 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, by securing 1.3 million laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children and young people. As of Monday 18 January, over 800,000 laptops and tablets had been delivered to schools, trusts and local authorities.

The number of devices available to each school, trust and local authority is determined by their number of children eligible for free school meals. All schools, trusts and local authorities have now been given the opportunity to order their full current allocation of devices.

The Government is providing this significant injection of devices on top of an estimated 2.9 million laptops and tablets already owned by schools before the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. On 12 January, we announced that we will be providing a further 300,000 devices over the course of this term.

Figures on the number of devices delivered is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/laptops-and-tablets-data/2021-week-3. These figures are broken down by local authority and academy trust. Figures on delivery by constituency are not available.

We have also partnered with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data to help disadvantaged children get online as well as delivering 4G wireless routers for pupils without connection at home. Routers have been distributed to schools, trusts and local authorities, who are responsible for allocating them to the families that need them most.