Teachers at a Scottish secondary are seeking to raise £10,000 in order to ensure that all their pupils have access to a device and a reliable internet connection so they can access the school’s new “digital approach to learning”, introduced as a result of the coronavirus lockdown.
Fears are mounting that the attainment gap will widen in the lockdown because children from less well-off backgrounds are unable to access the online learning being provided by teachers.
The children’s charity Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland warned recently that some of Scotland’s most vulnerable children are “digitally cut off from learning and from their school communities”.
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Now, Boclair Academy in Bearsden, East Dunbartonshire, has taken matters into its own hands, with a group of teachers seeking to raise £10,000 by running “5K a day in May” in a bid to ensure that all their pupils can access the support they are providing.
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They said many households in their catchment lacked devices - especially given that many parents were working from home just now. Other pupils, meanwhile, were struggling to get online at all.
At the time of writing, they had succeeded in raising over £2,000.
On the JustGiving fundraising website, they wrote: “During the Covid 19 pandemic we have moved to a digital approach to learning. Unfortunately the pressure on all our families at this time means households are often sharing devices with parents working from home and children requiring access to online learning. In other households devices are old or wi-fi and data are limited. We believe in equity of provision for all our families and all our learners. In order to support all the young people in our community, a group of our staff are running 5km every day during May to raise necessary funds. With your help we can ensure no one is left behind with education.”
Scottish Green Party education spokesman Ross Greer praised the teachers for “going above and beyond to ensure their young people have the greatest possible opportunity to learn given the challenging circumstances”.
However, he also called for Scottish government to act now and supply a device and stable internet connection “to all who need them”.
Mr Greer said: “Given that home learning will now be the norm for some time, having a tablet or laptop to learn from and a stable internet connection should now be considered core provision and supplied to all who need them by government. Councils and the Scottish government should reach an agreement quickly on minimum standards for digital provision and how they will fund it. Without this, existing inequalities will only widen further.”
When education secretary John Swinney appeared before the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills committee yesterday, he was asked what “attendance” was like for the online learning being delivered by schools and teachers. Mr Swinney said the Scottish government did not have “comprehensive data on the level of digital access”, but “in some circumstances” local authorities were “providing young people who have challenges in accessing digital technology with that technology”.
He added that in Scotland as a whole around 90 per cent of households had some form of digital connectivity.
Mr Swinney said: “The government is making available about £5 million of support from the fund for vulnerable people to ensure that we have in place the support and access to digital technology that young people require.
“We have given schools two years of foresight data on pupil equity funding, which enables them to exercise flexibility in the purchasing of any technology that may be required to enable people to access education, and we have given schools much more flexibility in how they can utilise that £120 million per annum.”
However, Scottish Conservative MSP Jamie Halcro Johnston said it was concerning that, as education secretary, Mr Swinney did not have any figures on the number of pupils without access to technology.
Mr Halcro Johnston added: “A huge number of young people are potentially missing out, and it concerns me that the Scottish government does not have any estimates of that.”
Last month, children’s commissioner Bruce Adamson told Tes Scotland that for some children the lockdown would be “catastrophic” and could have an impact on their mental health into adulthood. As well as food security, he said he was concerned about families having enough outdoor and indoor space and “digital exclusion”.
