Exclusive: School Laptop Cuts 'Will Hit Northern Children Hardest'
The government’s decision to cut state-provided laptops for disadvantaged school children in England will hit the north hardest, a former minister has warned.
On Friday, some schools were told the number of laptops they had been promised had been slashed by 80% after ministers changed the allocation process, according to the BBC – a day after a new legal duty was placed on schools to provide remote education for isolating pupils.
Now the government has been warned that the decision will hit hardest in the north of England, which is experiencing “so many” of the full and partial school closures required to deal with coronavirus outbreaks.
In a letter shared with HuffPost UK, ex-minister Lord Jim O’Neill expressed “considerable disappointment” at the decision to cut laptop access, on behalf of northern political and business leaders on the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP).
Related...
O’Neill, who served in the Treasury under George Osborne, highlighted the example of Parklands Primary School in a “highly disadvantaged” area of Leeds, which said it needed 168 laptops, was initially allocated 61, and is now getting just 13 under the new system.
He called on the government to restore previous laptop entitlements for areas with high concentrations of disadvantaged pupils “immediately”.
And he urged Boris Johnson to follow the lead of northern civic and business figures by rounding up surplus laptops in government departments and donating them to help children continue learning at home if they cannot attend school due to coronavirus.
The NPP, meanwhile, also stressed that disadvantaged children who risk going hungry as the government refuses to extend free school meals to the winter holidays are already likely to do “significantly worse” in GCSE exams.
In his letter to Gavin...
