The Town Close School community donates devices to Jane Austen College

The Town Close School community donates devices to Jane Austen College

We have been proud to deliver a full timetable to Town Close children throughout the two national lockdowns where schools have been closed to most pupils. This timetable has been delivered in School to key worker children with children at home accessing live via Zoom. The success of this virtual learning has only been possible thanks to our children’s ability to access technology at home, in some cases helped by devices lent to them by the School. A lot of children around the country have not been so fortunate and many are still without the technology required to take part in their lessons and, very importantly, to maintain connections with their school’s staff and their peers. The BBC launched a national campaign ‘Give a laptop’ asking for people to donate devices that could be distributed to the children in need, and the EDP launched their own local appeal ‘Every Child Online’. We wanted to help.

After an appeal to our parents and staff, a fantastic total of 17 devices were handed in to the School. These devices were then checked by our on-site IT department and cleared of any personal data to enable their swift re-use. Being in the midst of the lockdown already, it was essential to distribute the devices as soon as possible and we were delighted to contact Jane Austen College in Norwich to offer these devices to their pupils. They happily accepted and the devices were duly collected by the College last week.

Jane Austen’s Head of School, Mrs Turner, said, “as we approached another remote learning period, we have been working to quickly provide devices to bring our full timetable to life for our students. The laptops and iPads provided by Town Close will be an invaluable part of this offer, ensuring each student has quick access to the best device so they can continue to learn online during this period of partial school closure. The majority of the recipients are entitled to Free School Meals and come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Devices will be loaned to sixth formers who are putting together coursework, as well as Art and Graphics GCSE students who had been unable to access the software they needed with the Chromebooks we had been able to lend them”.

Thank you very much to everyone who donated a device as well as to our incredible IT team, Mr Shone and Mr Steward, who enabled such a fast turnaround. Should anyone have another device that they would like to donate, please drop it into the School’s Main Front Office.