Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his department has taken to ensure the suggested digital education platforms in the Contingency framework: education and childcare settings guidance, updated on 22 February 2021, includes the full range of platforms commonly used by schools.

The ‘Contingency framework: education and childcare settings guidance’ provides information about the Department’s funded programme to provide expert technical support for schools and colleges to set up secure user accounts for Google and Microsoft’s education platforms.

The Microsoft and Google platforms were chosen as they are free to use to the education sector and provide the unified technology to support effective remote education delivery.

Schools are free to consider other providers with chargeable services in this area to deliver specific elements of online education, where they see fit.