Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department has taken to work with (a) Cloud Learn and (b) other online education providers to create a secure online learning platform for secondary school pupils.
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.
Since April 2020, we have been working with Google and Microsoft to support all state-funded primary and secondary schools in England who did not have student user accounts already set up on an appropriate online platform.
Schools can choose to use their Government funded support to get set up on a free-to-use digital education platform: either a G Suite for Education (Google Classroom) or Office 365 Education (Microsoft Teams).
Once a school applies, Google or Microsoft confirm their eligibility for the programme and assign the school to an IT supplier. The IT supplier then sets up the platform for all staff and pupil/student accounts.