Event report: The Impact of Data Poverty on Access to Education Reception

On Tuesday 18 April, the Data Poverty APPG held a reception on The Impact of Data Poverty on Access to Education. The session focussed on how education at all levels in the UK is affected by data poverty.

The event was Chaired by APPG Officer Julie Elliott MP. Speakers included Shadow Minister for Further Education and Skills, Toby Perkins MP; Helen Milner OBE, CEO of the Good Things Foundation; Paul McKean, Director of Further Education and Skills at Jisc; Helen Burrows, Head of Content and Services Policy at BT; Chris Ashworth, Head of Social Impact at Nominet; and Matt Warman MP, Data Poverty APPG Co-Chair.

Please see below for minutes of the session:

Julie Elliott MP began by welcoming attendees. She set out the meeting’s aim to bring together stakeholders interested in mitigating the effects of data poverty on access to education at all levels, and noted how positive it was to see a number of new faces at the session. She then introduced Shadow Minister for Further Education and Skills, Toby Perkins MP.

Toby Perkins MP thanked Julie Elliott MP and the APPG. He called data poverty an incredibly important issue, particularly in the pandemic. He continued that the best part of his job as Shadow Skills Minister is meeting people from across the skills ecosystem, and seeing the crucial contributions they make to the economy plus the lives of young people. He said that, from meeting skills providers, digital access is vital to increasing mobility. He noted that during the pandemic, access to data was the only way people could study, which shone a light on how many people are excluded. These students were then left behind their peers by lack of access. On top of this, he spoke about the importance of digital skills to nearly every job role, which will be a further disadvantage to the nearly 6 million young people across the UK who do not have proper internet access. For this reason, he welcomed the Data Poverty APPG’s State of the Nation Report setting out the barriers to data access and proposed solutions, saying its message was echoed by the Association of Colleges’ report on lack of learning due to internet access. Next, Mr Perkins turned to apprenticeships, telling attendees apprentices are disproportionately affected by data poverty as they tend to come from less affluent backgrounds than students. This is made worse by the fact that university students need data access to apply to courses, something which locks the poorest students out in the first place. All this leads to a lack of a level playing field for young people in the UK. Turning to proposed solutions, Mr Perkins spoke of the value of politicians working in tandem with industry and the third sector in a bid to find innovative solutions to data poverty, and highlighted TalkTalk’s data voucher scheme in Manchester as an example of this collaborative approach working well. He said it was important that this was upscaled in a more systemic approach and noted that good progress has been made in Wales, where broadband has been made an essential utility. He closed by saying there is much more to do on data poverty, and that the Labour party see it as an essential barrier both to learning and to creating a less socially and academically divided nation.

Julie Elliott MP thanked Toby Perkins MP and introduced Helen Milner OBE, CEO of the Good Things Foundation.

Helen Milner began by declaring it is immoral, appalling and shocking that we have data poverty in our country. She told attendees one in five households don’t have broadband because they can’t afford it, that 25% of children didn’t have access during the pandemic, and that 11% of households are currently looking to change provider because they can’t afford their current broadband plan. She thanked Toby Perkins MP for setting out the benefits of ending data poverty and added that fixing the wider digital divide will be worth over £13.68bn in the next decade through increasing social mobility and opportunity. She outlined the good news that data poverty is solvable, due to it being a symptom of regular poverty. This creates clear policy steps that can be made towards reducing the cost of broadband, such as removing VAT on it. She described the current situation as a state of affairs where industry is doing as much as it can but the taxation status is adding needless costs. Turning to the Good Things Foundation’s own work in the sector, Ms Milner shared that the charity had recently launched their 1000th databank – described as a foodbank but for data – in conjunction with Virgin Media O2 and Vodafone, and through their national digital inclusion network. She ended by saying we can all do more to end data poverty and fix the digital divide, and urged the MPs and peers present to put proper support for the issue in their manifestos ahead of the next election.

Julie Elliott MP thanked Helen Milner. She said databanks are amazing, but more awareness is needed of the services they offer – something that is the case with a lot of policy initiatives in the area. She next introduced Paul McKean, Director of FE and Skills at Jisc.

Paul McKean raised the question of how best to quantify those who are struggling to access data poverty. He shared the wider definition of digital poverty as the inability to interact with the online world fully, and compared this with the OFS’ definition that a student is in data poverty when they’re without access to one of the core items needed to access the internet: hardware, software, a suitable study space, and tech support. He asked attendees if they feel that a mix of the above is needed for their own definition and reiterated the importance of remaining aware of the ever-changing nature of data poverty. Next, Mr McKean turned to the effect of reduced access to education due to data poverty, warning that the 2025 online learning entitlement will disadvantage those who can’t access the internet. He also pointed out how AI is about to hugely affect education and jobs, as people will need access to a data bank and data source in order to benefit from it. He recommended levelling up funding should be channelled towards data poverty, but that this needs to be combined with training on how to use resources such as the devices and databanks supplied to schools during the pandemic. From Jisc’s perspective, he also encouraged local and combined authorities to increase access to their free-to-use eduroam service and pointed to recent breakthroughs such as Manchester and Salford universities looking to introduce it to public transport, and Kent and Medway councils introducing it to public spaces.

Julie Elliott MP thanked Paul McKean and introduced Helen Burrows, Head of Content and Services Policy at BT.

Helen Burrows shared how thinking about the topic of data poverty and education took her back to the pandemic, where she spent a lot of time talking to the Department for Education (DfE) on how to support children who didn’t have the ability to learn at home. She called it a big opportunity for industry and government to do something significant in the data poverty space, which they missed. She explained further that BT offered to identify around 1m children who couldn’t home school, mostly due to lack of devices, but also for a smaller group, because they had no connectivity. As it happened, DfE provided laptops but didn’t want to find the families who didn’t have broadband. Ms Burrows said there is still an opportunity for a policy intervention for people in that group and others like them, whose income is too low to afford broadband at market prices. She told attendees this is particularly necessary as broadband in the UK is significantly cheaper than in the US and Europe, with BT and other ISPs unable to drive the price any further down, as they are barely above cost. Instead, she called for the issue to be looked at from the perspective of people’s incomes being too low, and that this, coupled with the wide positive effects of alleviating data poverty on sectors such as education, means funding should be directly targeted at those who are unable to afford to get online. She appealed to policymakers not to think about this issue in isolation, but to build it into wider plans for improving public sector services and skills. She referred to European examples where countries performing better than the UK on digital access have connectivity built into their benefits systems. She said this integrated system is what’s required in the UK, as BT did trials on offering data packages externally, but most respondents didn’t have the time or skills to work out how to gain data access over other needs.

Julie Elliott MP agreed that most people on universal credit are working and supporting families, and therefore are too busy to navigate the complicated data access landscape we have currently. She introduced Chris Ashworth, Head of Social Impact at Nominet.

Chris Ashworth set out his and Nominet’s role as designing national infrastructure to ensure it has a positive impact on systemic societal issues created by the digital age. He explained technology has the opportunity to be the ultimate leveller – that disabled people can work at home, young people have a world of educational resources available to them, and those who are less inclined towards school can take advantage of the web to do things such as set up an online business. All of these, however, require basic digital infrastructure to be in place. He said this is not being provided, and that by failing to do so the UK is failing young people – especially those with disadvantaged backgrounds, disabilities and in the care system who the internet could benefit the most. He pointed attendees towards Nominet’s Digital Youth Index, which explores the complexity behind these challenges. He revealed that among its findings are that 3.7m people in the UK would benefit from better digital connectivity, and that disadvantaged children are a third more likely to be in data poverty than their peers. He said data poverty also causes further social and educational issues in that children can’t learn or socialise online. He told attendees there are lots of brilliant stories about children using the online world to do great things but that these are currently the exception, not the rule. This has led to a state of affairs where we are not realising our youth’s potential.

Julie Elliott MP said the cost of getting these children up to speed is tiny compared to some of the other things public expenditure goes on. She handed over to APPG Co-Chair Matt Warman MP to provide the closing remarks.

Matt Warman MP said he wanted to end by talking about three things. First, politics, where he declared the Conservatives will likely mirror anything the Labour Party put in their manifesto on data poverty. He expressed hope that this means a consensus can be found on the topic. Second, data, and that thanks to the pandemic the Government learned there are significant issues around social tariffs, targeting connectivity, access to data, and awareness of databanks. This means government knows more now than it has ever done before. Finally, he explained that where the topic of data poverty falls down is that it cuts across so many departments, and the machinery of government is not set up to work well across departments. He shared from his own experience that BT’s offer to connect home-schooling families as a matter of priority during the pandemic didn’t reach his desk, despite him being Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure at the time. He expressed hope that the Cabinet Office would be able to lead a cross-departmental response. He pressed upon attendees to use these learnings when speaking to the Government on this topic. He thanked attendees, speakers, Julie Elliott MP and Toby Perkins MP for joining, and encouraged those in the room to remain for a while longer and network.