This week sees the Prime Minister’s announcement regarding a gradual lifting of restrictions and together with even more people receiving their vaccines, I know that this is welcome news indeed.
As we hear news about the reopening of schools, I know what a challenging and difficult period this has been for pupils, teachers and parents and I would like to thank all our headteachers and teaching staff in the Moorlands for continuing to work so hard to give our pupils the very best education possible in these difficult times.
I very much welcome that young people across Staffordshire Moorlands are continuing to benefit from the raft of measures the Government has put in place to help schools deliver high-quality learning and following the Department for Education’s announcement last month of a further 300,000 laptops and tablets to help even more children and young people learn at home, I wrote to all our schools in the Moorlands to make sure that they had all the laptops they required for disadvantaged children.
No child should miss out as a result of the disruption caused by this pandemic. That is why it has been our priority to equip those children most in need with the resources they need to succeed and I am pleased to hear that Staffordshire has received 4,213 laptops and tablets to date to help support disadvantaged children and young people while they learn at home.
While we all look forward to having our children back learning in the classroom as soon as possible, we will do everything in our power to give them the world-class education they deserve. Online access has become such a vital part of education and will continue to be as we help young people catch-up after the disruption caused by the pandemic.