27 Academy Trusts Given Just ONE Free Laptop Each From Government

[elsiegee40]

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/exclusive-27-academy-trusts-handed-just-1-free-laptop-despite-gavin-williamson-pledge-to-help-disadvantaged_uk_5f3ba21bc5b61100c3ac316d (HuffPost)

 

Education secretary Gavin Williamson has been told to “get a grip” as the scale of the government’s failure to deliver laptops promised to disadvantaged youngsters is laid bare in new figures.

 

Figures obtained by the Children’s Commissioner for England, shared exclusively with HuffPost UK, shows the chaotic rollout of the scheme left some 27 academy trusts with just one device each.

 

In April, Williamson pledged the government would fund devices for children on free school meals in Year 10, as well as for vulnerable pupils with social workers and care leavers.

 

But, despite some 540,000 pupils being eligible for the scheme, just 220,000 laptops were delivered to schools by August, the data shows, meaning a second lockdown could be disastrous for youngsters’ education.

 

Using special data gathering powers for public bodies, the Commissioner’s office has discovered a third of academy trusts received fewer than 10 laptops for their Year 10 students.

 

Turning to councils, which usually serve a larger number of schools, 20 local authorities had fewer than 500 laptops allocated, and there were five councils with fewer than 200.

 

Overall, there were only enough devices for seven in 10 disadvantaged Year 10s - the group of students beginning to study for next year’s GCSEs.

 

Simone Vibert, senior policy analyst, said one primary schoolteacher had estimated 70% did not have adequate internet access but that the school had been allocated just three laptops.

 

She added that for the scheme to have provided laptops to seven in 10 disadvantaged children in all other year groups, it would have needed an additional 940,000 laptops.

 

“During this pandemic, proper access to the internet is not a luxury for children having to learn at home, it is a necessity,” she said. “While this scheme was very welcome, we know that many disadvantaged children have missed out.

 

“The government needs to ensure that all children are able to access education in the coming weeks and months, hopefully in school, but also remotely if that becomes their only option.”

 

On the threat to children’s education from a second lockdown, Vibert added it was “critical that more laptops are ordered” now.

 

She said: “Similar to the Nightingale hospitals, a sign of success would be if not all of them are eventually needed.

 

“And the decision to order more devices must be taken without delay. As the initial lockdown showed, the challenges of the global supply chain for devices mean that orders take time to be fulfilled. Now is the time to learn lessons from the initial stages of lockdown and get ahead.”

 

Shadow education secretary Kate Green, meanwhile, told HuffPost UK: “Yet again government incompetence has let down our young people.

 

“Ministers boasted that they would get laptops and routers to disadvantaged young people who needed them for their studies but now thousands of children are paying the price for Tory failure.

 

“Every young person should have the resources they need to learn. It is time for ministers to get a grip and give children the support they need.”

 

The Department for Education (DfE) said it would be providing schools with a further 150,000 laptops to disadvantaged children this autumn.

 

It comes as the A-Levels results crisis threatens to engulf the government.

 

Williamson is under pressure to resign government forced into a major U-turn to back teacher-predicted grades after computer modelled results saw almost 40% downgraded and poorest children hardest-hit.

 

A DfE spokesperson said: “We continue to do all we can to make sure no-one is left behind as a result of coronavirus through targeted support for children who need it most, providing over £100m to support children to learn at home, including delivery of over 200,000 laptops and tablets for disadvantaged and vulnerable children who need them most.

 

“For disadvantaged children whose education is disrupted in Autumn term, we are initially providing an additional 150,000 laptops and tablets to schools, who will be best placed to pass these on to children who need them.

 

“Children will be returning to school full time in September and we have invested £1bn in a Covid catch-up fund which will also provide one-on-one and small group tutoring for disadvantaged pupils.”

[sigma]

We got a couple. Is giving out totally inadequate laptops to underprivileged kids a thing now?

[strawberry]

We got a couple. Is giving out totally inadequate laptops to underprivileged kids a thing now?

 

Yup, Government money, PP money, council money. Just buy a chromebook and throw it at the kid before anyone notices the money is there. Then when it comes back in a week snapped in half you have to use actual money because you've already doubled down on the "educational benefit"

[Zammo]

Whats strange is we got a whole bunch, and later were invited to apply for more (laptops only by this stage) as the DfE had surplus

 

We did and got a few hundred extra IIRC

[hardtailstar]

We were given lots.

 

Lots not collected by students....

[FN-GM]

Lots not collected by students....

 

Similar story back when they did this in 2007. The kids had something better so didn't want them.

[DrCheese]

LEA Secondary - 1100 students. We got 6. Just for students who had social workers/carers. None for Year 10 that we requested & arrived at the start of August - Totally pointless at this time.

[Meldrew]

Trust secondary, circa 1400 students. Got 19 from LA for students who have social worker, etc, then circa 15 from DfE direct. Then was invited to request more due to surplus and got another 18. Got a stack of them still waiting for students to collect. Plus we're soon going to be able to request devices in case of local lock down. These will be delivered within 2 days I seem to remember.

 

I wonder why the disparity?

[dobsonl]

We got 9 for 1200 secondary students, and then never got any invite to request any extras...

[localzuk]

We were sent a single one for a looked after child. But the council didn't bother to talk to us first, and we had already issued that child a Chromebook as part of our wider rollout of 1:1 devices. The council took it back, so our Trust of 6 schools ended up with nothing from that scheme.

[elsiegee40]

DfE assumed schools had 282 devices each before deciding free laptop allocations (Schoolsweek)

 

DfE assumed schools had 282 devices each before deciding free laptop allocations

The government assumed schools had as many as 282 laptops each in its calculation to decide how many additional free devices they would receive for disadvantaged pupils.

 

The disclosure may go some way to explaining reports yesterday that just 27 academy trusts received just one laptop under the £85 million government scheme to ensure poorer pupils didn’t miss out during lockdown learning.

 

A total of 200,000 laptops were issued to schools for disadvantaged year 10s and other vulnerable pupils, but school leaders said their allocations fell way short of what was needed.

 

Schools Week can now reveal this is because the government reached its allocation estimates based on an assumption that secondary schools already had an average of 87.3 tablets and 194.6 laptops. Primaries were estimated as having an average of 27.2 tablets and 49.1 laptops. The figures were based on a BESA survey from 2019.

 

When working out council and academy trust allocations, the department used these figures as “assumptions that private device need will be met to some extent by the device endowments of schools and college”.

 

But Bob Harrison, a school governor and former education adviser to Toshiba, said this rationale had been described to him by one headteacher as “bonkers”.

 

“It is a classic accountancy spreadsheet logic which is unrelated to the actual needs. Why couldn’t schools be allocated an amount based on pupil premium, then the schools could use their in-depth knowledge of the problem to decide where, when and how to intervene for maximum impact?”

 

Figures obtained by the schools commissioner, reported by the Huffington Post reported, revealed despite 540,000 pupils being eligible for the scheme – just 220,000 laptops were delivered to schools by August.

 

The government had also already missed its own target to deliver all the laptops by the end of June.

 

However, in freedom of information request response seen by Schools Week, the Department for Education did say after its estimate on how many laptops schools already had – they subtracted the proportion that were estimated to have been provided to teachers. This figure was based on Teacher Tapp survey from March.

 

This then allowed them to “reach an initial allocation for local authorities and academy trusts”.

 

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it was “obviously a pretty crude way of working out how many laptops and tablets are already available to schools and therefore how many more are needed to fulfil the government commitment”.

 

“However, we recognise that the priority was to get laptops and tablets out to schools as quickly as possible, and the Department for Education has attempted to make the best assessment it can in the circumstances. We certainly would not have wanted to see any further delay in the process. It has taken longer than we would have liked to deliver the laptops and tablets as it is.”

 

The DfE also said that it had set up a route for councils and trusts to request additional devices where their allocation fell short. Schools would have to “explain how they have identified this need” alongside providing “evidence to support this”.

 

The FOI read: “The department the reviewed requests for additional devices and allocated any additional devices to local authorities and trusts for eligible children and young people.”

 

But Barton added: “The important thing now is to treat this as a starting point. We would like to see the scheme extended further so that laptops and tablets are made available to disadvantaged children in all year groups who need them.

 

“This is important in the likely event that there is further disruption to education because of the pandemic and children need to periodically work from home. But it is also important in the longer term to close the digital divide and make sure that all children are able to utilise the wealth of learning resources available online.”

 

A study in July suggested the attainment gap between primary pupils had widened by up 52 per cent during school closures.

[hardtailstar]

DfE assumed schools had 282 devices each before deciding free laptop allocations (Schoolsweek)

 

DfE assumed schools had 282 devices each before deciding free laptop allocations

We have no tablets and only about 60 student laptops....

[DrCheese]

We have 5/10 laptops at most. 8 iPads. We made the decision years ago to focus what little budget we had on Desktop machines that have lasted far long than laptops ever would have.

[mrbios]

We had about 18-20 or so of the DfE ones sent to us. Although we as a school only requested 2. Someone at social services requested the rest, got them delivered to us and somewhere along the line said we would deal with issuing them..................without having spoken to anyone in SLT.

[FishCustard]

Also, sure the school may "have" 282 laptops, but that does not in any way mean they have 282 devices to just hand out to students!