Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking with local authorities to ensure that they have sufficient supplies of mobile broadband dongles to distribute to pupils so that they can participate in remote education during the covid-19 lockdown that has been in place since 5 January 2021.

The Government is investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services.

The Department has provided over 54,000 4G wireless routers, with free data for the academic year, and continues to provide 4G wireless routers where children need to access remote education.

We have also partnered with the UK’s leading mobile network operators to provide free data to disadvantaged families, which will support access to education resources, including Oak National Academy, and other websites. Schools are able to request free mobile data uplifts via the Get Help with Technology service: https://get-help-with-tech.education.gov.uk/.

We are grateful to Three, EE, Tesco Mobile, Smarty, Sky Mobile, Virgin Mobile, O2 and Vodafone. We continue to invite a range of mobile network providers to support the offer.

A number of mobile network providers are also progressing the zero-rating of educational resources, such as Oak Academy and BBC Bitesize.