Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many 4G wireless routers he (a) has delivered since the start of the covid-19 outbreak and (b) plans to deliver, to schools in England.

The Government is investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services, including securing 1.3 million laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children and young people.

This includes over 700,000 laptops and tablets that were delivered to schools, trusts and local authorities by 11 January.

The Department has published the latest data on the number of laptops have been delivered as of 11 January by local authority area and academy trusts here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/laptops-tablets-and-4g-wireless-routers-progress-data.

Data on the number of laptops delivered by parliamentary constituency is not available. This is because most laptops have been delivered to academy trusts and local authorities, which are responsible for distributing them to schools, usually in multiple constituencies.

We have delivered over 54,000 4G wireless routers, to schools, academy trusts and local authorities. Data on the local authority and parliamentary constituency to which routers have been delivered is not available.

We have also partnered with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data to help disadvantaged children get online as well as delivering 4G wireless routers for pupils without connection at home. For this we are grateful to EE, O2, Sky Mobile, Smarty, Tesco Mobile, Three, Virgin Mobile, and Vodafone. We continue to invite a range of mobile network providers to support the offer.