Question reference: S5W-34488
- Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 11 January 2021
-
Current status: Answered by John Swinney on 19 January 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what additional support it is providing to households that are undertaking home learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Answer
Scottish Government has invested £25m to support digital inclusion for school-aged learners across Scotland. At end-December 2020, almost 59,000 devices and over 10,000 connectivity packages had been distributed to learners and more will have been distributed since then.
A further £45m is being provided to councils to support families with remote learning. This additional funding may be used flexibly by councils to purchase additional digital devices, to recruit additional staff and to provide additional family support.
Glow, which provides access to Microsoft Office 365, Google G-Suite for Education and Wordpress Blogs, is freely available to all learners and teachers in Scotland.
In addition, Education Scotland has provided a significant expansion of online learning through the National e-Learning Offer. 600 recorded lessons and 14,000 items of online learning and teaching resources are available to schools. Education Scotland have also published clear principles and entitlements for remote learning and will be monitoring provision on a weekly basis.