Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many laptops have been delivered to students for the purposes of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic; what was the cost of those laptops; and what organisations supplied those laptops.
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.
As of Monday 01 February 2021, over 927,000 laptops and tablets had been delivered to schools, academy trusts and local authorities by the Department to support children to access remote education during the COVID-19 outbreak. Numbers of devices delivered to date by the programme is published regularly at https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/laptops-and-tablets-data/2021-week-5.
For supplying devices to schools, the Department has signed contracts with Computacentre and XMA to supply a variety of device types according to the needs of schools and end users. Unit costs of specific devices distributed by the programme are not published as these are commercially sensitive.