The UK has always had a significant Digital Divide – but COVID-19 has widened it dramatically. It has increased the pace of an already present trend, further restricted social mobility and reduced fair access to education and learning. As we’ve been forced to accelerate even faster into a world where digital skills and access determine prospects far more than traditional ‘hard’ skills and where traditional workforce management styles have been foreclosed, fair access to exceptional connectivity has never been more important. Both employers and employees now expect to work flexibly: Why live in a crowed city when the office can come to you? Why spend time on cramped commuter trains when you can spend longer with the kids? Why maintain expensive offices when you can just equip your workforce with laptops, mobiles and set them going? But what if you don’t have these skills, can’t access that technology and can’t rely on your internet connection being stable enough to support you, the kids, and your partner all at the same time? Whilst for many the accelerated move to remote, flexible, digital working provides opportunities for a better work-life balance and progression for others it is creating greater inequality and less upward mobility. The home-working economy is rapidly changing our social fabric. Nowhere is this inequality more apparent, and important to resolve, than with education. OfCom recently estimated that 9% of households with children don’t have access to a laptop or PC. 51% of household earning £6k – £10k don’t have internet at home, compared to 99% where earnings are over £40k. Only 25% of children eligible for free school meals or who have been adopted or in care achieved 9-5 grades in GCSE English and Maths in 2019. Affordability is a big part of this but basic availability of service is the first big hurdle. Without resolving this we risk allowing digital exclusion to become an intergeneration issue within families…
COVID-19 has significantly increased the Digital Divide across the UK. Poor infrastructure is enforcing digital exclusion. Ubiquitous access to fibre networks is urgently needed to reduce the barriers of accessing work and learning, to reduce the cost of technology and to revitalise our economy.