Schools: Online Support for Pupils

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge [V]]

My Lords, Ofsted has currently suspended its routine inspections but is able to go into schools for safeguarding reasons. When Ofsted’s inspections begin again, it will inspect on the offer of recovery that schools are giving to children, including of course blended learning, but there will not be retrospective inspections of schools’ provision during this time.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the parent of a year 4 child at a state school in London. It has provided excellent online resources for home-schooling but has been unable to offer face-to-face online teaching, as not all pupils have access to the necessary technology. Fortunately—in my case—it is not necessary to master year 4 maths to understand that the figures in the UCL report foretell long-term damage to life chances. Careers can be furloughed, but childhood and education cannot. In April, the Government promised to provide 200,000 devices to disadvantaged families. Very few have been delivered yet and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, four times that number are now required. When will the Government show the urgency needed to end the postcode lottery of the digital divide?

[Baroness Berridge [V]]

My Lords, the Government realise that, while we urgently wish all children to be back in school, it is subject to the scientific evidence at the moment. But it is good news that during the lockdown we have offered school places to all vulnerable children and those of critical workers. Those numbers are increasing dramatically: 47,000 children who are in contact with a social worker are now back in school, which is up from 37,000. However, we are looking at all the evidence base to help those children catch up and drawing on a specific pilot project that the Education Endowment Foundation ran with Sutton, NESTA and Impetus in relation to access to high-quality external tutoring. We will pilot that over the summer with 1,500 disadvantaged students. We take very seriously the need to assist schools to help these students catch up.