Asked by: Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the number of laptops that local authorities were required to buy for children who are eligible for (a) free school meals, (a) pupil premium, (c) education, health and care plans and (d) other vulnerabilities following the announcement of an additional funding allocation for laptops by his Department in February 2021.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services, including making 1.3 million laptops and tablets available for disadvantaged children and young people.
Upon delivery, laptops and tablets are owned by schools, academy trusts, local authorities or further education colleges who can lend these to the children and young people who need them most, during the current COVID-19 restrictions.
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many laptops, iPads and other IT and broadband support has been given to schools and other education providers during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services, including making 1.3 million laptops and tablets available for disadvantaged children and young people. The Government is providing this significant injection of laptops and tablets on top of an estimated 2.9 million already owned by schools before the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
To date, over 1.2 million laptops and tablets have been delivered to schools, academy trusts, local authorities and further education colleges. We are making further deliveries on an ongoing basis, and any school that has not yet ordered their allocation of devices can still do so.
Laptops and tablets are owned by schools, academy trusts, local authorities or further education colleges who can lend these to the children and young people who need them most, during the current COVID-19 restrictions.
We have also partnered with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data to help over 30,000 disadvantaged children get online as well as delivering over 70,000 4G wireless routers for pupils without connection at home.
We are grateful to Asda mobile, BT Mobile, EE, giffgaff, iD Mobile, IQ Mobile, Lebara, Lycamobile, O2, Sky Mobile, Smarty, Tesco Mobile, Three, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone for supporting the mobile data offer.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, in the event of future covid-19 lockdown restrictions to schools, what proposals he has to ensure that all children have access to appropriate devices for online learning.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services, including making 1.3 million laptops and tablets available for disadvantaged children and young people. To date, over 1.2 million laptops and tablets have been delivered to schools, academy trusts, local authorities and further education colleges.
The Government is providing this significant injection of laptops and tablets on top of an estimated 2.9 million already owned by schools before the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Once received, the laptops and tablets will be owned by schools, academy trusts, local authorities or further education colleges who can lend these to children and young people who need them the most. These laptops and tablets are intended to give schools the flexibility to provide remote education support and can continue to be used in the longer term either in the classroom or from home.
The Department also provided support for over 100,000 families to get online through uplifts in mobile data and 4G wireless routers.
We are considering future options on digital education, and we will set out our plans in due course.
Asked by: Ian Mearns (Labour - Gateshead)
Question
What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Education on the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on educational inequalities.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
Disadvantaged pupils have always been at the heart of education policy. We have taken unprecedented action to address educational inequalities resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
On 24 February, we announced a £700 million Education Recovery package, building on the £1bn from last year. As well as a range of measures to support all pupils to recover lost learning, the package includes significant funding aimed at addressing the needs of disadvantaged pupils. This includes a one-off £302 million Recovery Premium for the next academic year that will be allocated to schools based on the same methodology as the pupil premium. Schools with more disadvantaged pupils will therefore receive larger allocations. Within this package is a £22m accelerator fund, towards evidence-based approaches that support children and young people in disadvantaged areas.
In June 2020 as part of the £1 billion Covid catch up package, we announced £350 million to fund the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) for disadvantaged students for the academic years 2020/21 and 2021/22. The programme will provide additional, targeted support for those children and young people who have been hardest hit from disruption to their education as a result of school closures.
There is extensive evidence that tutoring is one of the most effective ways to accelerate pupil progress, and we want to extend this opportunity to disadvantaged and vulnerable learners. We are also funding small group tuition for 16 to 19-year-olds and early language skills in reception classes.
The Education Endowment Foundation was founded in 2011 to research and promote the most effective ways of accelerating pupil progress. They have published guidance to help schools make the most of this additional funding.
We are investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services. To date, over 1.2 million laptops and tablets have been delivered to schools, trusts, local authorities and further education providers. Since 2011 we have continued to provide Pupil Premium funding – worth £2.4bn again this year – for school leaders to use, based on the needs of their disadvantaged pupils.
Asked by: Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of slow broadband speeds on the education of children living in rural areas.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Access to gigabit capable broadband for communities and schools is being addressed through programmes rolled out in partnership between the Department for Education and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. We are investing an unprecedented £5 billion of subsidy to support the deployment of gigabit broadband in the hardest to reach areas of the country. This coverage will also include even more rural schools that would otherwise not be reached without the Government taking action.
To support children and young people to connect with remote education, the Get Help with Technology programme has partnered with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data to help over 30,000 disadvantaged children get online as well as delivering over 70,000 4G wireless routers for pupils without connection at home.
Where pupils continue to experience barriers to digital remote education, we expect schools and further education institutions to work to overcome these barriers. This could include distributing school or further education institution-owned laptops or supplementing digital provision with different forms of remote education such as printed resources or textbooks. This should be supplemented with other forms of communication to keep pupils on track or answer questions about work.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what ongoing support will be provided to schools and colleges by his Department to tackle the digital exclusion of their pupils after the completion of the roll-out of the Get Help with Technology Scheme.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department for Education is investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care. The Department is making available 1.3 million laptops and tablets and have already delivered over 1.2 million of these to schools, colleges, trusts, and local authorities, supporting disadvantaged children and young people who would not otherwise have access to a digital device.
All devices provided to schools and colleges by the Get Help with Technology scheme are the property of these institutions. The devices are intended to give schools the flexibility to provide remote education support and can continue to be used in the longer term either in the classroom or from home.
Those placing orders for devices through the Get Help with Technology service were given the option to select laptops and tablets with or without the Department for Education safeguarding and security settings applied. For those who required Department for Education settings, we are providing support and guidance to ensure they are prepared so devices can continue to be used to support educational activities in advance of the licence expiry date of the end of September 2021.
Schools can apply to gain access to and training on a free digital education platform. They can choose to apply to use either Google G Suite for Education or Office 365 Education. They can find out more and submit their application through the Get Help with Technology programme. The Key for School Leaders website also provides feature comparison and case studies on how schools are making the most of these platforms to help schools make the most appropriate choice.
Online education support is available for schools through the EdTech Demonstrator Programme, a peer support network offering training and advice to schools and colleges on ways technology can be used to strengthen remote education and catch-up arrangements. It provides access to a network of schools and colleges who are already using remote education technology resources and can help those new to online education platforms to develop effective practice. This will help schools understand how to best use technology to promote pupil engagement and achievement and consider how best to support pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.
The Digital Platforms Programme, within the Get Help with Technology Scheme, has been extended for a further 12 months. The extension will give other schools the opportunity to apply to the programme and claim their grant by the end of March 2022.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he plans to develop a long-term post-covid-19 digital inclusion strategy for children and young people; and what discussions he has had with relevant stakeholders on tackling digital exclusion as part of the Government's Levelling Up agenda.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Technology in education has been essential for continuing to teach remotely during the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent school and college closures. In the long term, it has the potential to support teacher workload reductions, flexible working, cost savings, inclusive teaching practice and improved pupil outcomes.
The Government is investing over £400 million in support for remote education including making available over 1.3 million laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children and young people. We have partnered with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data to help over 30,000 disadvantaged children get online as well as delivering over 70,000 4G wireless routers for pupils without connection at home.
We are building on the Department’s significant investment in devices, platforms, training and digital services to create a lasting digital legacy.
Alongside this, ensuring that our children, regardless of their background, have world-class digital skills needed for the future, is a key priority of this Government. The computing curriculum, introduced in September 2014, aims to ensure that all pupils from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 4 can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems, and are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology. This sits alongside ensuring all pupils acquire knowledge of the fundamental principles of computer science and programming. All state-maintained schools must teach the computing curriculum and academies and free schools may use it as an exemplar.
We continue to work with other Government departments, technology providers, charities, and foundations, to ensure vulnerable people access the support they need to benefit from digital connectivity. We want every adult to have a base level of digital and cyber skills so that no-one is left behind by the digital revolution.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has made an assessment of the effect of digital exclusion on the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department recognised that a lack of digital access posed a risk to the efficacy of remote education. In response, we invested over £400 million to support access to remote education as an injection of support to minimise digital exclusion. To date, over 1.2 million laptops and tablets have been delivered to schools, academy trusts, local authorities and further education (FE) colleges. We have also provided support to over 100,000 families to get online by providing uplifts in mobile data and 4G wireless routers.
Until 8 March, the Department expected all primary schools, secondary schools and FE colleges in England to provide remote education for the majority of their pupils and students, with the exception of vulnerable children and young people and the children of critical workers, who were able to attend school or FE colleges in person. Where vulnerable children and young people and children of critical workers did not attend school or FE colleges, we expected schools and FE colleges to provide them with remote education.
During this period, we understood that some pupils may face difficulty engaging in remote education and may be considered to be vulnerable children and young people and therefore would have been eligible to attend on-site provision. It was for the child’s school or local authority to make this decision. The decision would have been based on the needs of the child and their family, and a range of other factors, as set out in the guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-maintaining-educational-provision/guidance-for-schools-colleges-and-local-authorities-on-maintaining-educational-provision#vulnerable-children-and-young-people.
As of 8 March, attendance is mandatory for all pupils of compulsory school age. However, schools affected by the remote education temporary continuity direction are still required to provide remote education for pupils where their attendance would be contrary to government guidance or legislation around COVID-19. This includes, for example, where such guidance means that a class, group, or small number of pupils need to self-isolate, or that clinically extremely vulnerable children need to shield.
Where pupils and students continue to experience barriers to digital remote education, we expect schools and FE colleges to work to overcome these barriers. This could include distributing school or FE college-owned laptops or supplementing digital provision with different forms of remote education such as printed resources or textbooks. This should be supplemented with other forms of communication to keep pupils and students on track or answer questions about work. These expectations were also in place across the period of restricted attendance on-site.
The Department’s research on lost learning has produced interim findings based on more than 400,000 Renaissance Learning reading and maths assessments taken in the first Autumn half-term of 2020-21.
The analysis uses historic test scores to predict what each pupil would have achieved on the test in Autumn 2020 had the COVID-19 disruption not occurred, based on that pupil’s test score in the previous years. The difference between the actual Autumn 2020 score and their predicted score is an estimate of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak – presented here in terms of ‘months of progress’.
The gap between disadvantaged pupils and others, measured using the disadvantage gap index, narrowed by 13% at Key Stage 2 and 9% at Key Stage 4 between 2011 and 2019.
Through our existing grant funding partnership with Nesta, the Department launched an evaluation programme in Autumn 2020, the EdTech R&D Programme, to understand the impact of technology use in education, particularly the impact and disparity between advantaged and disadvantaged students in attainment and outcomes during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The programme includes the evaluation of six remote education tools being used in schools and colleges in England. The first evaluation cycle is underway, with iterations throughout the life of the programme. A final report with key findings on using remote education tools effectively for all students, with particular recommendations for disadvantaged students, will also be shared with the wider sector by December 2021.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which Department or organisation will be responsible for (a) assessing the number of children and young people who remain without access to an appropriate digital device, an internet connection and/or data after the roll-out of the Get Help with Technology scheme is complete and (b) tackling that gap.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Ofcom runs an annual survey which publishes data on children’s access to technology. This data informed the Department for Education’s COVID-19 response through the Get Help with Technology programme.
The Department has invested over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care. We have secured 1.3 million laptops and tablets and have already delivered over 1.2 million of these to schools, colleges, academy trusts and local authorities, supporting disadvantaged children and young people who would not otherwise have access to a digital device.
Laptops and tablets are owned by schools, academy trusts, local authorities, or further education colleges who can lend these to the children and young people who need them most.
The Department has partnered with the UK’s leading mobile network operators to provide free data to disadvantaged families, which will support access to education resources. Families will benefit from this additional data until July 2021.
We are working closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to improve broadband connections in schools. DCMS has powers to address some affordability issues for some telecoms services.
We are building on the foundations of the Department’s significant investment in technology and exploring future options, which we will set out in due course.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many digital devices have been allocated to disadvantaged pupils during national restrictions since March 2020.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is providing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care. We are making available 1.3 million laptops and tablets to schools, colleges, trusts and local authorities, supporting disadvantaged children and young people who would not otherwise have access to a digital device.
As of 15 March 2021, over 1.2 million laptops and tablets have been delivered. More information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/laptops-and-tablets-progress-data-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak. The Department has been publishing this data every week during term time, and the next publication will be Tuesday 23 March.
Once received, the laptops and tablets are owned by schools, trusts, local authorities or further education providers, which they can lend to children and young people who need them and are intended to enable schools to provide remote education. In the longer term, the Department expects that schools and colleges will continue to make effective use of the devices they have received.
Through the Department’s grant funded, Digital Platforms Programme, over 5,000 schools are now accessing either a Google or Microsoft digital platform for remote learning. Microsoft and Google platforms were chosen as they are free to use to the education sector and had the unified technology and support to set up and deliver effective remote education provision. The primary reason for selecting the Microsoft and Google platforms was that they are free to use to the education sector. Both platforms also have features and functionalities that are designed to be used for communication and collaboration that can assist teachers, pupils and students in remote education. The Department plans to examine the broader effect of the interventions we have put in place to support children and young people to continue their education during the COVID-19 outbreak.
From the 8 March, attendance is mandatory for all pupils of compulsory school age. Schools affected by the remote education temporary continuity direction are still required to provide remote education for pupils where their attendance would be contrary to government guidance or legislation around COVID-19. This includes, for example, where such guidance means that a class, group, or small number of pupils need to self-isolate, or that clinically extremely vulnerable children need to shield.
Where needed, schools are expected to offer pupils three to five hours of remote education. This includes either recorded or live direct teaching alongside time for pupils to work independently to complete assignments that have been set.
The Department has recently updated guidance and resources for schools around safeguarding and delivery of remote education, which can be accessed via Get Help with Remote Education available here: https://get-help-with-remote-education.education.gov.uk/safeguarding.