The Scottish Government's roll-out of digital devices such as tablets and laptops to 'digitally-excluded pupils' has been branded a “shambles” by Scottish Labour.
The party said the schedule for delivering the devices has been “wildly optimistic”, and warned better planning is needed to meet the “ambitious” targets.
The Scottish Government announced this week that more than 23,000 iPads and Chromebooks will be sent to low-income families and care leavers as part of the Connecting Scotland programme, which aims to reach around 50,000 digitally-excluded people by the end of 2021.
Ministers faced criticism earlier this year that devices were not being given to pupils quickly enough after around £9 million was spent on 25,000 devices.
READ MORE: Digital learning: inside Scotland's classrooms of the future
Scottish Labour education spokesman Iain Gray said: “The SNP can talk a good game but they repeatedly fail to live up to promises.
"With more school children isolating at home or participating in blended learning, access to tablets or laptops is a vital part of ensuring continued access to learning.
“Online learning support for pupils is still very limited and inconsistent across schools – this must be improved given the amount of young people who need to take time away from the school building during the pandemic.
“Scottish Government commitments to deliver devices have fallen far short of the mark. The projected schedules for delivery were wildly optimistic given the constrictions of the pandemic, and roll-out so far has been a shambles.
“This is no time for self-congratulation. The promise of Chromebooks just fills the gap left by failure on earlier Connecting Scotland targets and better planning is needed if the SNP Government is to fulfil its promises to get digital devices to pupils by the end of the year.”
The Scottish Government has been contacted for comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel