Assembly Written Question 14469/17-22

Question: To ask the Minister of Education, in relation to support for schools in East Antrim to adapt to online learning, to detail (i) the number of laptops or other types of IT equipment distributed; (ii) the support provided in regards to internet access; (iii) the number of students that have benefitted from support; and (iv) whether any requests for IT and internet access support are outstanding.

Answer: I have invested significantly in education technology, with almost £7 million of funding provided during the current financial year, to help those pupils in need across Northern Ireland access the necessary IT equipment to assist with their remote learning.

The current scheme for lending devices aims to ensure that resources are targeted where there is greatest need. Priority has therefore been given to children currently who are entitled to free school meals, and either have special educational needs, are newcomer children or are children looked after or otherwise vulnerable in year groups 12, 14, 7, 4, 11 and 13.

Following the allocation of an initial 11664 devices, I approved the procurement of a further 17,700 devices and Education Authority (EA) has started to allocate these to schools. The procurement of these additional devices will now allow the scheme to extend to pupils in the remaining year groups. Up to the end of February, 15,871 new devices have been provided by the EA to lend to pupils.

In July 2020, I announced that free Wi-Fi and mobile connectivity will be provided to children and young people, including those in rural settings, who may not have had access to digital technology. To date this support has included 6474 WiFi vouchers and 2039 Mi-Fi devices, a mobile connectivity solution to support those children who are not within a BT Wi-Fi hotspot.

As outlined above, the focus has been on meeting the demand from the priority year groups and fromJune 2020 to the end of February 2021, 20 schools from the East Antrim constituency have requested devices and 432 have been allocated. This fulfils the requests to date for devices within the priority groups. The number of devices will increase as the EA continues to allocate further devices to support those children most in need in the other year groups.