Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, by what date all laptops are planned to be delivered to schools in Bristol West constituency that have not yet received their allocation.

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 25 January 2021, over 870,000 laptops and tablets had been delivered to schools, academy trusts and local authorities across England, who are responsible for distributing them onward to disadvantaged children and families.

Regional figures for delivery of devices are currently not available for the period requested and figures by Parliamentary constituency are also not available.

All schools, academy trusts and local authorities have now been given the opportunity to order devices. Laptops and tablets are owned by schools, academy trusts or local authorities to lend to the children and young people who need them most during the current COVID-19 restrictions.

Figures on the number of devices delivered, broken down by Local Authority and Academy Trust are available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/laptops-and-tablets-data/2021-week-4.

Where schools need additional devices above their allocations, they should contact the Department for Education’s service team at covid.technology@education.gov.uk. They should include the number of disadvantaged children in years 3 to 11 who require support and an explanation of how they have gathered this evidence.

We have also partnered with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data for the academic year to help disadvantaged children get online. We are grateful to EE, O2, Smarty, Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Three, Virgin Mobile, and Vodafone for their collaboration.

We have also delivered 54,000 4G wireless routers for pupil and care leavers without connection at home.