Remote Education: Self-isolating Pupils

Nick Gibb Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing the debate. Ensuring that children continue to receive their education during the pandemic is critical, to ensure that this generation of schoolchildren reach their potential and to prevent a widening of the attainment gap; I share her objective.

It is thanks to the outstanding efforts of our teachers and staff that pupils continue to receive the education and opportunities they deserve in the face of the pandemic. We recognise that all children and young people have had their education disrupted as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The Department is committed to the continuation of high-quality education for all pupils during this period. We know that schools and colleges worked extremely hard over the summer to prepare for a full reopening and to develop remote education contingency plans. That is testament to their commitment to ensuring that any missed education is recovered and that we prevent the attainment gap from widening further. We have a shared responsibility to ensure that this generation of young people do not face long-term disadvantage.

The Government were clear that pupils in all year groups and from all types of school should return to school full time from the beginning of the autumn term. Figures show that, as of 15 October, 99.7% of schools were open and over 7 million children and young people are back in school, representing 89% of pupils across the country. We continue to do everything in our power to ensure that every child can continue to attend school safely, because that is the best place for them to be for their education, development and wellbeing.

The Department works closely with public health bodies to monitor the rate of transmission of the virus. On 15 October, approximately 0.1% of pupils in state schools were self-isolating because they had tested positive for the coronavirus, 0.5% were self-isolating with a suspected case of coronavirus, and between 3.9% and 4.3% of pupils were self-isolating because they had been in contact with a potential case.

We recognise that for some pupils, remote education may need to be an essential component alongside classroom teaching. In those circumstances, the Government want to ensure that there is no doubt about the roles and responsibilities within the system for providing that remote education. That is why the Secretary of State issued a temporary continuity direction on 1 October, to give clarity that schools have a duty to provide remote education for state-funded school-aged children who are unable to attend school due to the coronavirus pandemic, in line with guidance and the law. That links to the remote education expectations that the Department published for schools on 2 July. The direction says that schools must have regard to the guidance, which has been available to schools since 2 July. It sets out clearly the expectations that we have for the quality and breadth of remote education.

Ensuring that schools can provide a high quality of remote education was and continues to be a key part of our work to support schools. Alongside the direction, the Department announced further remote education support intended to help schools and colleges in meeting the remote education expectations. The support package is available over the coming months, and parts of it are available now to support schools and colleges seeking additional support. Information can be found on the “Get help with remote education” page on the gov.uk website.

We have invested over £160 million to support remote education. As part of that, during the summer term, we delivered over 220,000 laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children who would not otherwise have access to the internet. It was one of the largest procurements of computers in the UK. On one single day, 27,000 were being delivered. We are now supplementing that support by making available 250,000 additional laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children in years 3 to 11 in the event that face-to-face schooling is disrupted this term as a result of the pandemic. By the end of this week, we will have delivered, since the beginning of term, 100,000 of those 250,000 computers to schools.

The hon. Member referred to St Thomas of Canterbury primary school, and she sent me a letter today. I checked the status of the school’s order with my officials as a consequence of the hon. Member sending me that letter. According to my officials, St Thomas of Canterbury primary school’s order of 47 laptops was received on Friday 16 October and we expect that the laptops will be dispatched to them tomorrow. The hon. Member has achieved some piece of information by orchestrating this debate this evening.

We are also working with the major telecoms companies to improve internet connectivity for disadvantaged and vulnerable families. The Department is piloting an approach where, for families who rely on a mobile internet connection, mobile network operators will provide temporary access to free additional data, offering them more flexibility to access the resources that they need the most.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I am becoming increasingly aware of the fact that being poor means that people pay their bills differently, whether it is electricity meters or gas meters. They get their data from pay-as-you-go mobiles from providers other than the mainstream ones, such as giffgaff and Lycamobile. What is the Minister doing in those sorts of areas?

[Nick Gibb]

With permission, I will write to the hon. Member about that so that I get the facts absolutely right. We are very concerned about these issues, which is why we have provided more than 50,000 4G routers to homes and the other support that I referred to. I will write to her specifically about the point she raises.

We are funding expert technical support and training to help schools and to help set up Google or Microsoft digital education platforms. Schools can also access guidance and training from a network of schools and colleges across the country that are leading the way in the use of digital. They are our edtech demonstrator schools. They have already produced a library of resources and materials to support remote education arrangements, including support for schools that are less digitally able, alongside guidance about how to make use of Department for Education-funded digital platforms and devices. The programme is proving popular: well over 1,000 schools and colleges are receiving weekly tailored support, and more than 5,000 schools and colleges are attending livestreamed webinars.

To support the hard work of schools in delivering remote education, Oak National Academy, which the hon. Member referred to, was very quickly brought together —I think within two weeks of the pandemic leading to schools closing—by more than 40 teachers, and their schools and other educational organisations also helped them. The Department has made £4.84 million available for Oak National Academy, both for the summer term of the last academic year and for the 2020-21 academic year, to provide video lessons for a broad range of subjects for reception to year 11. Oak will remain a free optional resource for 2020-21. Since the start of the autumn term, half a million users have visited the Oak National Academy platform, and there have been 3.1 million lessons.

The Government are clear that the best place for children is in school, where they can be with their friends and teachers and can catch up with the education that they may have lost when schools closed to most pupils, but ensuring that that education can continue when schools are required to send children and young people home to self-isolate because of a confirmed case of coronavirus is also vital. We are providing the support and devices for the most disadvantaged, and we are providing £1 billion of catch-up funding to ensure that the current generation of school students do not have their long-term prospects damaged by the appalling pandemic that the world is confronting.

Question put and agreed to.