Schools: Online Learning

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, as I outlined, we are aware of the connectivity issues for various homes and schools and have provided peer-to-peer training and support across the school system through our EdTech demonstrator schools. Some 6,900 schools have been given access by the department to Microsoft Education or Google Classroom during the pandemic. In building our infrastructure in future, as the noble Baroness described, connectivity will be essential.

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

My Lords, in response to an Oral Question from my noble friend Lord Blunkett on 11 February, the Minister stated, as she did earlier today, that the Government had invested

“more than £400 million to support access to remote education … including … 1.3 million laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children and young people.”

While that is certainly welcome, she did not answer the specific Question asked by my noble friend regarding

“the number of children who are not eligible for face-to-face teaching who have not been able to access online teaching for more than 80 per cent of the normal timetable in … 2021.”—[Official Report, 11/2/21; cols. 484-5.]

Will the Minister take this opportunity to answer that Question?

[Baroness Berridge (Con) [V]]

The instruction given to schools on the amount of remote education also included that teachers were to monitor whether children were engaging with that education. It is not possible for the department to collect that kind of granular data on a day-to-day basis. Teachers are in front of the students virtually and we put the obligation on them to monitor that. If they were aware that children were not engaging remotely, they had the ability to bring them into school as a vulnerable child.