Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to increase the speed of the rollout of (a) digital devices and (b) access to the internet to children who are not in school as a result of the covid-19 outbreak in (a) Yorkshire and The Humber, (b) Kingston Upon Hull and (c) the UK.

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.

As of Monday 25 January, this includes over 870,000 laptops and tablets that were delivered to schools, trusts and local authorities.

Laptops and tablets are owned by schools, trusts or local authorities who can lend these to children and young people who need them most, during the current COVID-19 restrictions.

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.

Figures on the number of devices already delivered is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/laptops-and-tablets-data/2021-week-4. We have also delivered devices to academy trusts that include schools in Yorkshire and Humber, which are not included in this figure.

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

Where schools need additional devices, in order to support disadvantaged children, they should contact the Department for Education’s service team at covid.technology@education.gov.uk. They should include the number of pupils in years 3-13 who require support and an explanation of how they’ve gathered this evidence.

To support access to the internet we have 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.

We are grateful to EE, O2, Sky Mobile, Smarty, Tesco Mobile, Three, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone, BT Mobile and Lycamobile for their collaboration. We are currently engaged with additional mobile network operators and continue to invite a range of mobile network providers to support the offer.