Laptops for every child needed to prevent ‘huge gap’ in attainment, says shadow children’s minister

All school children should be given a laptop if they don’t have access to an electronic device at home, the shadow children’s minister has said, as concern mounts over a lack of access to online learning in England.

Tulip Siddiq called for urgent investment to ensure children having to self-isolate had access to laptops to enable them learn remotely, as hundreds of thousands of pupils each day are unable to attend school due to coronavirus.

Speaking to The Independent, the Labour MP said digital access had become an “essential” part of children’s education, and that failing to ensure all pupils had an electronic device was creating a “huge gap” between the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and their peers.

“All children during this pandemic have been relying on the internet and digital devices to do their work. There’s now a huge gap emerging between the kids who have fast broadband and lots of devices to go around, and kids who are fighting over one laptop or one phone,” she said.

“We should have access to electronic devices for children who don’t have them. It contributes hugely to children’s attainment gap. A year of a child’s life is going to affect them massively in terms of their attainment, and everything about their life chances.”

More than 680,000 state-educated pupils in England were absent from school each day in the last two weeks of November, according to the latest government statistics.

At the start of the pandemic, education secretary Gavin Williamson announced that disadvantaged children across England would receive laptops and tablets as part of a push to make remote education accessible for pupils staying at home during the outbreak.

Announcing the scheme in April, the minister said: “By providing young people with these laptops and tablets and enabling schools to access high-quality support, we will enable all children to continue learning now and in the years to come."

However, just 220,000 devices and 50,000 routers were initially provided, compared to the 540,000 children in groups that were eligible for the scheme – meaning that only 37 per cent could be allocated a device. 

A further 340,000 laptops have been obtained this term, according to the Department for Education (DfE), but it is not clear when they will be distributed.

It comes after it emerged in October that the allocation of laptops to disadvantaged pupils had been cut by up to 80 per cent, after the DfE changed its allocation process “in the context of significant global demand”.

Separately, DfE guidance published in October stated that the devices could only be ordered when there were more than 15 children self-isolating within a school “and no broader recommendations to a ‘bubble’ or year group” – which campaigners said was causing children to “lose out on learning”.

Ms Siddiq said the government’s system for delivering these laptops and digital devices to pupils was “very badly prepared”, adding: “I hope it’s something we can fix in future because even though there’s a vaccine coming, it’s likely that we are still going to be going back to Zoom for long periods of time.”

Some schools have decided to provide their own electronic devices to pupils who needed them. Oasis Community Learning, a charity that runs 52 academy schools across the country, is rolling out 30,000 iPads to primary, secondary and sixth form students.

Nathan Jones, who works for the charity’s Waterloo branch, said: “Digital access was a big deal before the pandemic, but through lockdown loads of schools were quickly moving to online lessons. That’s great if you’ve got enough money to have a device per child at home and decent internet access.  

“But we’ve got families in small one-bed flats with no internet devices for homework, and that’s a real struggle for the kids and for the parents. We know families with three of four kids at home and they’re all having to try share a mobile phone to do their work on.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders union NAHT, said the government’s laptop scheme required an “urgent upgrade”, adding: “We know that schools are struggling to get laptops for their pupils, and that many schools have had their laptop requests reduced by the DfE.”

He urged that the regulation around devices only being provided if there are more than 15 children self-isolating should be changed “immediately”.

“There will be plenty of children who are being denied access to a device because of this. No pupil should lose out on learning simply because of a lack of access to the relevant technology,” he said.

It comes after the Children’s Commissioner told The Independent that a generation of poorer children may never recover from the “cruel blow” of the coronavirus pandemic, as they have fallen behind their peers academically and been pushed deeper into economic hardship due to job losses among parents.

In June, researchers from the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank found it was highly plausible that over 1 million more people, including 200,000 children, would be below the poverty line compared to a situation where the pandemic had not occurred, by the end of the year.

Ms Siddiq said that while there was no “silver bullet” for tackling child poverty, ministers should be doing more to support families during the coronavirus crisis – including ending the five-week wait for universal credit, removing the two-child limit for families on benefits and scrapping the benefit cap.

“Years and years of cuts have built up the child poverty statistics. We may not be able to get rid of it in one year, or even one term of a Labour government, but I think we can do a lot better than the situation we’re in at the moment,” she said.

The shadow minister said she believed children had often been an “afterthought” in the response to the pandemic, and that the government was ill-prepared to cope with the rise in child protection referrals following a decade of cuts to services.

“I don’t feel there’s been a coordinated effort to ensure that the services are prepared for this upsurge. It feels like the government has been really burying its head in the sand,” she added.

“Many services had so many cuts over the last 10 years they couldn’t deal with the pressure of this pandemic. These problems already existed but they just got exacerbated by the pandemic. That is where I feel the real problem is.”

Although the pandemic has pushed many children from low-income families deeper into poverty, Ms Siddiq said that one positive thing to come out of it were sympathetic attitudes among the general public towards those in need.

She said this was epitomised by the public support for Marcus Rashford’s campaign, which successfully encouraged ministers to provide free school meals to disadvantaged pupils over the summer holidays.

“The free school meals campaign flooded my inbox. I don’t remember having so many emails before on one topic. Why did it take weeks and weeks of delay and resistance by ministers and backbench Tory MPs? It just wasn’t necessary. I don’t know why they didn’t do it earlier,” she said.

“A lot of Tory MPs told me secretly that they’d had so many emails and been held to account by so many of their constituents that they thought they were doing the wrong thing, but they were too scared. Maybe if those at the top started realising what the mood of the country is, things would change.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “The pace and scale of the government’s devices programme is unprecedented. We have purchased over 340,000 laptops this term alone to support disadvantaged children – by Christmas, this will be an injection of over half a million since the pandemic hit.  

“We are working to make sure as many disadvantaged children as possible benefit from receiving a device this term, and that no pupil, no matter their background, loses out on an outstanding education.”