This blog post is a summary of key points in Audit Scotland’s report that might be useful for educational settings, such as schools, nurseries and local authorities to consider.
Read the full report with this link Tackling digital exclusion (audit.scot).
“Digital exclusion is strongly associated with poverty and people with certain protected characteristics.”
Anyone working with groups that may be at-risk of digital exclusion should consider the potential barriers in place to them accessing and using such technology. If there are analogue alternatives, these should be as effective and readily available, along with support, training and access provision for people to engage with them.
Where this is not the case, the Royal Society (2022) talk about the double loop of poverty where analogue factors are entrenched by digital ones to doubly affect those at risk of exclusion.
Some of the impacts of digital exclusion that are more likely to surface in education are:
- making it harder to access services and information
- making it more difficult for parents to engage with children’s education
- incurring debts or being unable to make payments if they lack the skills and confidence to use online payment methods.
Some of these, more than others, relate directly to rights of individuals, including:
- Right to receive and impart information
Many schools and local authorities already have digital leaders or champions, and I imagine that ensuring these families are not digitally excluded is high on the list of school improvement actions anywhere digital is included.
The report also calls for a Scottish minimum digital living standard (MDLS) which “includes, but is more than, having accessible internet, adequate equipment, and the skills, knowledge and support people need. It is about being able to communicate, connect and engage with opportunities safely and with confidence.”
This is an aspect we have tried to factor in our recent guidance on digital skills for learners and teachers. Ideally, this guidance will support local authorities and educational settings to develop such a set of skills and knowledge in learners with the aim of reducing digital exclusion from not having them.
The last point that really resonated for education was ‘how poorly designed digital services without useable alternatives can lead to barriers to accessing services and have a negative impact on vulnerable people.’
Where apps are used to communicate learning to families on a regular basis – how effective are the non-app alternatives? How does a paper copy compare to video or verbal media shared on apps? Does the school or nursery make this feedback more equitable for families that need it? Perhaps in-person sharing on a regular basis?
If they don’t factor and mitigate this effectively, we risk having a ‘part of the population … unseen or unheard [as] the pace of technological change continues’.
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