Government's lack of preparation on laptops for school children is 'unforgivable'

David Richards, CEO of Sheffield-based live data firm WANdisco, believes lessons were not learned from the first lockdown in March 2020 and that there should have been a more aggressive move to ensure that there was an even playing field for all children in state schools when it comes to accessing technology.

Mr Richards helped launch a campaign called Laptops For Kids last year to equip schoolchildren from underprivileged backgrounds with devices to enable them to carry on learning from home in the event of another lockdown.

The campaign will have distributed 350-400 devices in Sheffield by the end of the month and has attracted thousands of pledges.

The boss of WANdisco has also called for the Government to provide free internet access to all school children through a British Education Network.

He said: “This would be very easy for them to do. They could create a safe network across the whole of the UK for every single school child that blocked out pronography, gambling and all the things that children shouldn’t ever see and they could do that with subsidies across the board.

“They could provide a subsidised service for free to all school children using the current backbone in the UK.

“They don’t need to build any infrastructure. They could just roll that plan out and subsidise it from the existing providers.”

While there was an announcement today that service providers such as EE, Three and Virgin Mobile would provide access to the internet through the mobile data scheme, children would need access to a mobile phone.

Mr Richards pointed out that there are those from under-privileged backgrounds that don’t even have access to mobile devices.

He said: “We’ve had a situation where a lady who was earning slightly more than she would have got claiming benefits, wanted to work because it was the right thing for her to do.

“She was on the frontline working as a cleaner in a care home. She had three children. Two were in college. Both had aspirations to go to university and they had one phone between them, which meant that the children were unable to do homework or in this situation work from home.

“What that does is they would be excluded potentially from going to university simply because they didn’t have access to technology.”

Mr Richards is calling for businesses that can support the Laptops For Kids to get in touch. Email: [email protected].

The Department for Education has been approached for comment.

Laptop scheme can work across the UK

David Richards wants to roll out the Laptops For Kids scheme across the country.

“We can solve this problem very quickly across the UK but we’re going to need people to run it in their local areas across the UK,” he said.

The scheme refurbishes used laptops in large quantities.

Mr Richards said: “We’re trying to roll this scheme out nationally.

“That was the intention because we had predicted, correctly, that there was going to be a second lockdown that would impact the whole of the UK again and that this was going to be a problem.”

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