Bobby Seagull: 'Damaging educational divide' from Covid-19 pandemic

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Is the Covid-19 pandemic opening up a damaging educational divide? With students learning from home, access to laptops and broadband is crucial. But many children are left without and risk falling behind. Here, in his own words, Newham teacher and former University Challenge contestant Bobby Seagull speaks about the danger of the 'digital divide'.

By Bobby Seagull, Newham teacher and former University Challenge contestant

As an educator and teacher, the pandemic of covid-19 has brought about unique challenges (and opportunities) in educating my students. Before lockdown, all of us were used to particular classroom routines.

My students would line up outside our classroom, take their seats for what I hope would be an engaging maths lesson perhaps learning about Pythagoras’ Theorem. I would walk around the class peering into exercise books, occasionally making corrections with my trusty red pen that students had omitted square rooting the final answer. This is not the reality anymore.

The majority of my secondary school students are at home. Learning from home is critically dependent on access to devices and internet. My own state school has been privileged enough to have historically invested in laptops. So we have been able to issue our own laptops to students in need of devices.

But the sad picture is that not all schools have been fortunate enough to be in this position. Some schools in London and beyond have been reliant on charities and even parental fundraising efforts to address this shortfall of laptops.

Even if a student has access to a device such a laptop, this alone does not guarantee successful home learning. We have limited or no control over whether students have broadband access, let alone the quality and speed of it being sufficient to stream lessons. Even then, families with 3-4 children might be sharing one device.

Admittedly, teaching from home has given opportunities to be creative using technology. But research has shown the problems one million school children in the UK have getting online. Education changed my life so I find this heartbreaking that others are not getting the same opportunities. Education is one of the great social levellers, giving everyone the chance to aspire. However this digital divide is simply not acceptable as we are damaging their opportunity to learn. 

According to the Children’s Commissioner, the “vast majority of children decline academically over the long summer break”, but this effect is most pronounced for disadvantaged children. Research has shown that summer holidays might account for two thirds of the attainment gap between lower socio-economic and higher socio-economic families by age 14. A lack of adequate to home learning will exacerbate this.

Where there is a will, there is a way. As Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford showed with his successful campaign for extending free school meals over the summer, we have to somehow ensure all students have access to a laptop as soon as possible.

Going forward, there is still uncertainty as while we hope that children will be able to learn in schools again from September, the threat of second waves of corona or localised lockdowns means access to technology will be critical.