Schools across Dudley borough are being urged to take up an offer by a mobile phone firm during lockdown to ensure education can continue. Councillor Keiran Casey has been speaking to mobile phone providers to see what more can be done to ensure that pupils having to stay home can access learning online. He has discovered a scheme that Vodafone have launched called Schools.Connected, offering free SIM cards for pupils that have 30GB of free data for 90 days. The scheme is aimed at helping address concerns raised by headteachers and education trusts about home connectivity and students that have fallen behind in their studies.
Headteachers have expressed anger at an inability to access the promised government laptops for pupils remote learning.
All UK schools went into lockdown on Tuesday, but had been reassured by the government that a million laptops would be made available to those in need of help getting online.
However, when primary school heads tried to access the online ordering system for the laptops on the gov.uk website, they hit a brick wall.
A pop-up message told them it was not possible - and they should simply wait to be contacted.
Michael Tidd, headteacher at East Preston Junior School in West Sussex, described it as very frustrating .
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