Students access remote learning at Oxford Academy thanks to laptop donations

The 11-18 secondary comprehensive school near Blackbird Leys serves some of the most disadvantaged communities in Oxfordshire. A donation of 32 refurbished laptops from Getting Oxfordshire Online is helping more students access their learning.

Speaking last year to local IT firm Planet IT, Headteacher Nora Ward has said: “The students of The Oxford Academy are incredible young people. With support and hard work, they will be the entrepreneurs, artists, athletes and leaders of Oxford in the future. Unfortunately, for many of them they come up against incredibly difficult economic circumstances.”[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”401″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Nearly half the students at The Oxford Academy are disadvantaged and therefore receive free school meals; many other families narrowly miss out on the criteria. This is more than double the average in most schools in Oxfordshire. Thirty per cent of children in Blackbird Leys, Littlemore, Rose Hill and parts of Cowley live in poverty (Indices of Deprivation 2019), making the areas in the top 20 per cent of the of the most deprived areas in Britain.

The school received 32 reconditioned laptops in November from Getting Oxfordshire Online. This enabled them to give students devices to work on at home, who previously were working on their mobile phones, and in some cases had no devices at all. One family had only recently moved to the country and was facing considerable financial difficulty.

They were also able to provide devices to some of their 6th formers who could previously only do homework by coming into the school.

The school says: “All our homework is set on a platform called Google Classroom, which enables students to access work and communicate with their teachers. The devices were also extremely valuable during a period of remote learning to enable students to access the live learning lessons. We’re grateful to work in partnership with our community to support our learners.”

Thank you to all those individuals and businesses who have donated devices to make this work possible.

If your school or charitable organisation would like to refer disadvantaged people of any age to Getting Oxfordshire Online, please contact us.