Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to improve the quality of digital education for elderly people in the UK during the covid-19 outbreak.

For adults (19+) with low-level or no digital skills, we have introduced a legal entitlement to study new Essential Digital Skills qualifications (EDSQs) at entry level and level 1 for free. EDSQs are a new qualification type, based on new national standards for essential digital skills, which will provide adults with the digital skills needed for life and work. The new digital entitlement mirrors the existing legal entitlements for English and maths and sets digital skills on an equal footing in the adult education system to English and maths, as a third basic skill.

The government is committed to making essential digital skills provision more accessible and flexible by building on the innovation in online learning implemented during the COVID-19 outbreak, ensuring that all adults can gain essential digital skills at a time and place that suits them.

We also continue to support the provision of basic digital skills training in community learning settings through the Adult Education Budget. This provision has strong participation from older learners.

The Skills Toolkit was created in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, primarily to help give workers who had been furloughed or were at risk of redundancy an opportunity to retrain. However, the courses are accessible to all and include free, high quality digital and numeracy courses.

Courses on offer cover a range of levels, from everyday maths and tools for using email and social media more effectively at work, to basic digital skills offered by Lloyds Bank, the Open University and Microsoft.

As of 30 May 2021, there have been an estimated 219,000 course registrations via The Skills Toolkit.