The digital divide

With homework often set online, pupils that do not have access to a digital device are at a major disadvantage. Elizabeth Anderson from the Digital Poverty Alliance examines the issue and how schools can help.

One in five children across the UK are in digital poverty – meaning they have either no suitable device for learning or no internet connectivity, at home. With homework growingly set online, and a recent survey for us at the Digital Poverty Alliance (DPA) showing that 80 per cent of primary school children, and 90 per cent of secondary school students, are expected to submit homework online at least once a week, this poses a major social issue when we consider aspiration and educational outcomes.

At the DPA, we work with thousands of families each year who are disconnected. Where lack of internet access is often considered an issue for older people, the cost-of-living crisis – which comes immediately after a surge in online services – has driven a deep divide around how people can use digital tools. We consider digital poverty as encompassing the inability of an individual to access online services where, when, and how they need them. Whilst frequently there is a perception that access to a smartphone is sufficient to call someone connected, our research for our Tech4Families programme has shown that this is often impractical where children and young people are trying to create more complex homework or even coursework for high-stakes examinations.

Digital frustration

Anyone whose laptop has run out of battery on a long train journey will know the frustration of attempting to write emails – let alone full reports – on a smartphone. Talking to the University of Sussex who conducted our recent evaluation, parents and students explained that trying to use learning platforms on smartphones when the sites were designed for laptops was impossible, with many simply not working. Children commented on trying to cut and paste pictures and move through different apps on a phone, and the difficulty that this posed. For children with impaired vision or issues with dexterity, trying to use small screens is challenging.

The result of having no laptop or broadband in the home leads to parents having to find alternatives, which are often difficult. We hear from parents who travel 20 miles to libraries to pay to print homework. We talk to young people who try to borrow time on a computer from friends or relatives, with mothers and parents increasingly feeling that they are failing their children by being unable to afford a device. There are those children who manage with smartphones, often damaged. And then some can’t do their homework at all. Some are kept behind at school to do it (sometimes in detention), and others just fail to engage with homework because it’s seen as impossible.

Support through Tech4Families

Through our delivery scheme Tech4Families, we support children and families directly, and the evaluation of the success of the programme found that 92 per cent of parents felt their child’s motivation to learn had increased purely by receiving a laptop (and where necessary, connectivity alongside this). This shows what huge impact can be had by ensuring that people have the tools that are needed.

Yet this support is often patchy. Other DPA research shows that many schools cannot afford to allow families to even borrow devices to take home and that the understanding of digital poverty may be lower. Funding frequently simply doesn’t exist in school budgets to provide one-to-one devices, even though these are now often essential. Even at primary school, we talk to parents whose children are expected to use Microsoft Teams for homework or to use smartphone apps that require children to borrow parental devices. One parent we spoke to – a single mother – particularly struggled with this as the only smartphone they had was how she received notifications of cleaning or delivery work.

We also know that there is a divide between geographies. In Ayrshire (one of our delivery areas), 17.5 per cent of households are “lapsed or non-users” of the internet – compared to under five per cent in London. We frequently see that rural, coastal, and post-industrial areas see high levels of digital poverty with little infrastructure to provide joined-up support to access keyboarded devices such as laptops or desktops, and the skills to support families to use these devices effectively and safely. For children, many parents reported that their child’s confidence across a range of essential skills – such as saving files, connecting to WiFi, or setting up emails – increased thanks to having the device with some basic training resources. All of this is why we believe that every child needs access to a laptop that they can use within the home environment. Whilst the debate ranges around smartphone use by children, monitored access to a laptop is now essential for learning.

Whilst joined-up action is needed by the government, every section of society can help. With 19 million adults currently in digital poverty (and young school leavers the second most impacted group of adults after the elderly), it’s urgent that we stop the divide rising, as more and more areas of life require online access. Ninety per cent of jobs require online applications; healthcare, banking, and welfare support are all moving rapidly digital.

So what part can schools play?

What costs nothing is understanding and awareness raising. It is crucial that all teachers can have a basic understanding of digital poverty, and how different factors play into this. Lack of devices or connectivity (through affordability, or lack of reliable internet infrastructure). Lack of basic skills – two-thirds of the children we surveyed (who had experienced digital poverty) did not know how to change a password. As well as a lack of trust in tech within the family, or no idea of how to sort out tech issues that arise can add to this.

The next step is asking prompt questions to understand access at home. “Do you have a laptop you can use at home?” or “Is there broadband at home?” are simple questions that don’t need to be stigmatising.

For schools that don’t have the capacity to create device-led schemes, providing offline homework options that don’t force children to use smartphones to write reports, or see parents needing to travel miles for printing, can be the simple solution.

In schools that can consider devices, a lending scheme can be a starting point – ideally with children able to hold onto the device for a whole term, avoiding the bullying that can come from obviously collecting this. Parental contribution schemes (including a scheme run by the DPA, which leverages additional funding) can support a whole year group to access a device, even where some parents cannot afford to contribute.

If every child is expected to submit homework online – which at the current trajectory is very likely imminently – every child needs access to a learning device – a device with a keyboard. But until government funding is a reality rather than a dream, we must all work together to ensure that children are not being left behind, or left to fend for themselves, to create homework and coursework and fulfil their educational potential.