Remote Education: Oxford West and Abingdon

(asked on 11th February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many laptops have been distributed by his Department to school pupils in Oxford West and Abingdon constituency since 1 March 2020 as part of the Department's programme to help pupils, students and families access remote education during the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 22nd February 2021

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 significant injection of laptops and tablets is on top of an estimated 2.9 million already owned by schools before the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The laptops and tablets are to help support schools, academy trusts and local authorities to provide access to remote education and online social care. Schools, colleges, academy trusts and local authorities are responsible for distributing the laptops and tablets and are best placed to know which children and young people need access to a device.

As of Monday 15 February 2021, over one million laptops and tablets have been delivered to schools, academy trusts, local authorities and further education providers. We are making further deliveries all the time and expect to achieve our overall commitment of delivering 1.3 million devices by the end of the spring term.

We have partnered with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data to help disadvantaged children get online as well as delivering 60,000 4G wireless routers for pupils without connection at home.

Figures on the number of devices already delivered are available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/laptops-and-tablets-data. These figures are broken down by local authority and academy trust. Figures by constituency are not available.

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