How to help every child learn remotely

Pre­vent­ing dig­i­tal exclu­sion appears high on the government’s agen­da. Some £100 mil­lion has been poured into remote dig­i­tal learn­ing, includ­ing deliv­ery of more than 200,000 devices for dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren, plus £1 bil­lion invest­ed in a COVID catch-up fund.

Yet accord­ing to the Edu­ca­tion Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (EPI), more than 450,000 devices are need­ed, with 20 per cent of chil­dren eli­gi­ble for free school meals hav­ing no access to a com­put­er at home.

Why the current schemes aren’t good enough

Accord­ing to the Depart­ment for Edu­ca­tion (DfE), ini­tia­tives such as the Oak Nation­al Acad­e­my online class­room and EdTech Demon­stra­tor Pro­gramme best-prac­tice net­work play a piv­otal role in ensur­ing tech­nol­o­gy has a pos­i­tive impact. But indus­try prac­ti­tion­ers argue a lack of inno­va­tion, co-ordi­na­tion, over­sight and for­ward-think­ing.

“The lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion scheme has tak­en far longer than planned for devices to reach their end-users, which means many stu­dents have been with­out access to dig­i­tal resources for the dura­tion of the school clo­sures. The eli­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria were also quite nar­row, so many stu­dents will have missed out,” says the EPI’s direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and exter­nal engage­ment Rhys Spence.

Char­i­ties such as the Access Project, which helps dis­ad­van­taged stu­dents gain access to top uni­ver­si­ties, have turned increas­ing­ly to cor­po­rate part­ners. For exam­ple, a recent £23,000 dona­tion cov­ered 60 lap­tops and rel­e­vant soft­ware.

“Next sum­mer you’re poten­tial­ly going to see A‑level and GCSE grades real­ly dip­ping because there hasn’t been enough time for stu­dents to catch up. Cor­po­rate part­ners step­ping up to bridge the gap is vital,” says Access Project pro­gramme and vol­un­teer­ing direc­tor Lucy Ball.

More than £32 mil­lion in free resources was pro­vid­ed to schools between March and May, accord­ing to the British Edu­ca­tion Sup­pli­ers Asso­ci­a­tion. The likes of BT have part­nered with the DfE to pro­vide six months’ free wi-fi to fam­i­lies in need, as well as launch­ing its Skills for Tomor­row online learn­ing hub, Bare­foot Com­put­ing pro­gramme to sup­port teacher train­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tions with char­i­ties, such as Barnardo’s, School-Home Sup­port and Kid­sOut, with dig­i­tal exclu­sion ini­tia­tives.

Collaborating to keep kids from digital exclusion

With the longevi­ty of such ini­tia­tives called into ques­tion, BT responds that it’s in talks with the DfE to expand its work to tack­le dig­i­tal exclu­sion.

“We’ve already helped 2.8 mil­lion chil­dren and our goal is to help five mil­lion by 2025,” says Pro­fes­sor Keren­sa Jen­nings, BT group direc­tor of dig­i­tal impact. “It’s crit­i­cal to keep up momen­tum and make sure the progress we’re mak­ing con­tin­ues to dri­ve impact as lock­down eas­es and we move into the future.”

Col­lab­o­ra­tions between indus­try, gov­ern­ment and schools, are crit­i­cal to pro­vide resilience to edu­ca­tion sys­tems, accord­ing to the EPI. This is echoed by Sharon Davies, chief exec­u­tive of Young Enter­prise, which teach­es young peo­ple finan­cial savvi­ness and entre­pre­neur­ship. Davies advo­cates for a greater lever­ag­ing of com­mu­ni­ty resources to house lessons with­in spaces like youth clubs, and cap­i­talise on sup­port from local men­tors and cham­pi­ons.

“We have to accept young peo­ple need to learn dig­i­tal skills and new ways of com­mu­ni­cat­ing and get­ting jobs. We have to find a way round this lack of access or it will com­pound exist­ing dis­par­i­ties,” she says.

Helping disadvantaged learners work remotely

What­ev­er the approach, the EPI is call­ing on gov­ern­ment to ensure the strat­e­gy is cen­tralised and coher­ent, to avoid deep­en­ing inequal­i­ty of access between schools that are able to fos­ter high-lev­el part­ner­ships and those that are not, says Spence, who points to pilot ini­tia­tives under­way to sup­port pupils with dig­i­tal learn­ing cen­tral­ly.

The Eduu.School, for exam­ple, is a part­ner­ship between edtech plat­form Gluu, the Shire­land Col­le­giate Acad­e­my in the West Mid­lands, Birm­ing­ham and Black Coun­try local author­i­ties, and the Trau­ma Response Net­work to help dis­ad­van­taged learn­ers work­ing remote­ly.

Next sum­mer you may see A‑level and GCSE grades dip­ping because there hasn’t been enough time for stu­dents to catch up

“The find­ings from these and oth­er inno­v­a­tive tri­als should be con­sid­ered cen­tral­ly to deter­mine pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions in the school sys­tem,” the EPI rec­om­mends. Indeed, Gluu chief exec­u­tive Chris­tine Major is buoyed by the high engage­ment lev­els across Eduu.School, from live lessons to well­be­ing, vir­tu­al field trips, cod­ing, lan­guages and prizes.

“We set out with the intent of reach­ing 1,000 stu­dents, but once the word was out, the doors were opened much wider. We have 3,000 stu­dents across 15 schools in Eduu.School and are being asked to take on more. We’re real­ly hap­py with how it’s going, now it’s a mat­ter of the eval­u­a­tion piece,” says Major.

With Gluu co-founder Sean Gard­ner, she will present to gov­ern­ment, with the inten­tion of mak­ing Eduu.School avail­able to all UK stu­dents, con­tain­ing down­load­able con­tent opti­mised for mobile.

Remote learning preparing kids for future of work

Gluu’s core work has been to scale edtech solu­tions from indi­vid­ual schools by match­ing them with big-tick­et part­ners, then com­mer­cial­is­ing fin­ished prod­ucts back with­in the sys­tem. While it has been a piece­meal approach, the Gluu team are now see­ing bar­ri­ers fall.

“There’s been a real shift in terms of a col­lab­o­ra­tive coali­tion approach. We’re pulling togeth­er part­ners to deliv­er Eduu.School who pre­vi­ous­ly might not have worked togeth­er,” says Gard­ner.

“There’s a real­i­sa­tion our chil­dren are in a dif­fi­cult place. I don’t think any teacher is look­ing to put hur­dles in place, so things have changed def­i­nite­ly. We’ve invit­ed a num­ber of stake­hold­ers to be part of the Eduu.School eval­u­a­tion and if that doesn’t prompt them into action, we can’t do any more.”

One of the biggest shifts also to have an impact on dig­i­tal exclu­sion is how the future of learn­ing is mir­ror­ing the future of work.

“The lock­down has made us con­sid­er what atten­dance is: no longer 9am to 3.30pm. That puts the onus for learn­ing more on the stu­dent than the teacher. That’s a good thing,” says John Gal­loway, vet­er­an teacher, con­sul­tant and advi­so­ry board mem­ber for edtech trade show Bett.

Problem is bigger than a lack of devices

Gal­loway indi­cates it’s not just a lack of devices and band­width at the core of dig­i­tal exclu­sion, but the abil­i­ty to work inde­pen­dent­ly. This must also be con­sid­ered and sup­port­ed in the roll­out of dig­i­tal learn­ing pro­grammes, from adapt­ing stu­dent mind­sets to how, and what, teach­ers teach.

“Work­ing from home with mate­ri­als sent to you means you have more con­trol over what you’re learn­ing and when. You have to set aside time and make deci­sions. It may be Mon­day morn­ing at 9am isn’t the best time for you to learn French. So do art instead. If we are going to be work­ing from home so much more, then this shift is going to be prepar­ing stu­dents for that,” says Gal­loway.

“It may mean someone’s future suc­cess is depen­dent on the abil­i­ty to cre­ate struc­ture around the task required. That is going to cre­ate a divide between those able to do that and those less able.”

Young Enterprise’s Davies agrees the recov­ery will need to focus beyond aca­d­e­m­ic learn­ing, incor­po­rat­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties through part­ner­ships to learn and work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly. “If we can get it right with social mobil­i­ty, access to role mod­els, access to aspi­ra­tions, we could make things bet­ter,” she con­cludes.

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