New Chromebooks for local primary school children

A new Community Grant for Claygate Primary School has paid for 10 Chromebooks to help families access homework online.

Hilary Ali, Deputy Head Teacher of Claygate Primary School, said: “We currently have a number of families who are experiencing financial hardship. These families have no tech at home - this is really impacting children in that they are not able to complete homework (which is all set online) and are struggling to access many of our online support packages which would make a real difference (online timetables support, reading packages, maths support). We feel that having a simple Chromebook at home enables additional learning to take place and will really made a difference to these children.”

Improving educational attainment for disadvantaged students is one of Walton Charity’s key funding priorities. The Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent school closures has disproportionately impacted poorer students and the attainment gap has increased between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils.

The Department for Education found that the effect of school closures on disadvantaged pupils is equivalent to undoing a third of the progress made in the last decade to close the learning gap in primary schools. Research by Vodafone also shows the socio-economic ‘digital divide’ impacts people's life chances and access to technology is becoming as important as reading and writing for young people’s future life chances.