Do you know of any families that do not have wifi?

[MattWanksock]

A colleague said today that the school her DC go to rang to ask if they had wifi at home and were able to homeschool for the foreseeable. I do not believe it to be a disadvantaged area but I have no idea as I don't work where I live.

At first I was surprised and a little upset for the children of the school that this question needs to be asked. Having spoken to DP he says I mustn't understand how privileged we are to not have been asked that question. I should also feel bad about such an assumption. It was also mentioned at the 5pm briefing that it would cost £100 in data on pay as you go to get complete a day of zoom and educational websites.

The school our DC attend just assumed we would have a device to do 1000 zoom calls a day which I do think was a bit off.

So... do you know any household with children 0-18 that does not have wifi? AIBU to think you would be hard pressed to find a house that didn't have wifi due to the way the world is now.

My point was only that things are not always what they seem and that it's not just the middle class who hate to see benefits going down the pisser.
I am no angel and I have struggled but never became a drug addict despite having to spend time around junkies living in squats and in the most desperate destitution.
I found out at 29 the main reason I kept having breakdowns and making terrible choices when I tried to enter the workforce was due to asd. Having never recieved the benefits I needed was the cause of my poverty. I've had to work so hard in addition to raising 2 asd kids alone I returned to work after each of their births and yet I am still paying off loans from the bad times but my credit rating is improving ever so slowly. If I put one foot wrong the whole thing will fall in on itself.
I never attained a degree, never learned to drive despite being "bright" blah blah due to all those years undiagnosed. I don't think it's virtue signalling to say so.

*ProfessorSillyStuff

@inquietant that's kinda my point, I get very sick of being bunched in with people like that based on something like a TV!

But you are saying that the people you know who can't afford things are wasteful, whilst you are virtuous.*

I know one family, and they are pretty much the only family I know, because I have asd and barely socialise because I can barely cope with it, especially when the first family I meet is like that. I should have made that more clear sorry.

@ProfessorSillyStuff don't apologise, we post such short snippets on here. No harm done?

@PlanDeRaccordement

Yes I do. A quick google can tell you that 7% of U.K. households have no internet. Of the 93% that do, 24% only access it via a mobile phone. So that’s a few million children at least.

I was going to post something similar, @PlanDeRaccordement.

When the Universal Credit software was developed, the people doing it had no idea that for a huge proportion of claimants, their main way of getting online was via a mobile. They had to do loads of work to make the system function and be accessible via a smartphone, which was part of the reason the rollout was so late.

When I was doing frontline work, a client's phone being out of service because they had no money to top up their PAYG was a regular occurrence. And like PPs, I know families that often don't have food for everyone or electricity.

A couple of years ago, I had a client die in a house fire caused by a candle that was being used because they had no money to top up the meter. Thankfully, the children and their mother were staying elsewhere that night.

Free broadband for everyone and tech for poor families would make a massive difference to social mobility imo.

Exactly 'Brinkmanship' - the rural disadvantage on this issue is significant and it never ceases to amaze me how everyone who takes these things for granted are so unaware. I am lucky enough to finally have better speeds but we still have extremely poor mobile signal - so much so that we have to keep a landline.

You probably don’t know anyone as you don’t move in such under privileged circles. And be thankful for that. But also be aware that plenty of households don’t have enough food, let alone WiFi.

@inquietant I am a terrible communicator. Hehe nice to meet you

I was lucky when I was younger, I knew a kind man who was like a secure base he would always let me use his Internet and printer if I was trying to apply for jobs when I was homeless. However there was lots of more dodgy men offering me a place to stay and Internet too.
My area is quite rural too, sometimes I could find some place to sleep and it would be in a notspot. The installation charge for fibre to some locations nearby would bankrupt some and I think the govt would need to introduce legislation forcing BT to make the infrastructure for those to recieve it.
Another thread is discussing the prospect of schools collaborating with the BBC to deliver a unified and comprehensive nationwide curriculum via TV aerials, sounds like a bloody good idea to me!

@Evvyjb

I have been delivering computers and wifi routers (which we pay for) to students and families at my school since March (secondary teacher). It's an area of high deprivation - we have allocated around 300 computers and nearly 100 routers.

The worst one was a family in temporary accommodation, all in a 1 bed flat, on the top floor of a block. 2 teenagers. The flats looked out onto Eton playing fields. I sat in my car after delivering those ones and cried.

I know exactly how you feel, @Evvyjb.

After 12 years, I moved on from doing frontline support work because I'd lost my professional detachment and found I was getting either angry or upset by the awful situation people were in and how powerless I was to help.

The benefit capped families were the ones that distressed me the most: £384.62pw income and rents of £250-£300 a week meant that families were often without the most basic of things.

WiFi comes low on the list of needs when things are that tight.

I know of adults at my work (no children) who don't have WIFI & so can't work at home.

Just seen this
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/05/call-for-pupils-without-laptops-in-england-to-be-allowed-into-schools-covid

On the point that it might cost someone £100 a day in data, it's true, but you'd have to be a complete idiot to pay that.

My pay as you go sim offers unlimited data for £1 a day, only paid on days you use it. Sure, there might be people to whom £5 a week is a lot of money just to enable their kids to access their schoolwork, but the £100 figure is ridiculous and people who actually pay that deserve what they get.

This is a few years ago now, but I remember being driven to tears and distraction when my dc first went to secondary school and suddenly had to do all their homework on a computer and either email it in, or worse, print it off. They were supposed to be able to access computer and printer in the library at school, but the older kids always bullied the younger ones and wouldn't let them use them.

We had dial up, no printer and limited programmes. It was a huge faff, having to go out and buy floppy discs and fiddle about for hours. My neighbour was extremely kind and patient. He was a senior tech person who had computer and printer at home and he helped us a lot.

I remember the frustration of taking 3 hours to produce a ridiculous piece of work on a drawing programme that would have taken 5 minutes with a pencil and paper. It was nothing to do with IT, it was a cookery illustration.

I can well imagine the stress and anxiety for families who can't afford the technology or the broadband. As with gas and electric, it is the poorest people who have to pay the most for internet access.

Back in the last century we had schools television and radio. Why the government couldn't have set something like that up I don't understand. If Joe Wickes can be on the telly, why not some National Curriculum TV.

[quote midnightstar66]@Rahrahgurl it's not just applying for benefits. Those in the work search group of UC are expected to look for work 35 hours a week. Majority of this would need to be online for most [/quote]
I once won an appeal against a benefit sanction because the client hadn't been searching for jobs for 35 hours a week.

He lived rurally, and had no internet access. Even if he'd been able to afford the £6.50 bus fare to the nearest library to use the free wifi, it was only open 19 hours a week.

His claimant commitment originally included calling in at 10 potential employers each week to see if they had any jobs going, so he used to stick his head round the door of the village pub and the village shop most days.

People in rural areas on low incomes are doubly disadvantaged imo. Even when it comes to groceries, the choice is often an expensive village shop or an expensive bus ride to the nearest supermarket.

In know houses where the wifi is only via their phones, and so it is data, and therefore paid.

I know houses where there is only one adult's phone for kids to use, and kids too young to have own phones.

There are quite a number of people on mn who talk about having to share laptops. We are a family of 5, with dh and I WFH on laptops and 3 teenage kids trying to do Teams live lessons. So we need 5 laptops. Very few people can do that.

I know well off families who live in areas where the wifi won't support video eg Teams lessons live. (rural, but not remote, within spitting distance of M4, rural broadband is a non issue for government)

I know many, many people who can't use their phones at home due to poor recption, so unless they have decent cable internet, they don't get access. (again, not a poverty thing though)

It must be impossible to jump through the hoops set up by head teachers on six figure salaries who think everyone can download all the latest apps and sit on Zoom all day.

I agree with your general pionts, but this is bloody unfair on teachers. There was a head on Points West last night who had been up all night trying to sort work packages for her kids.
Tachers and heads have had a bloody difficult year, and now tales on here of some schools with 50% of kids in and teachers are expected to teach a full day in the classroom and online at the same time.

I know 2 households (dc school friend and a neighbour) that dont have wifi.
DC school friend lives over the back of us and before covid, almost lived here. The childs mum cried during one phone call because she was so relieved that he could stay here, have his supper and keep warm.
The whole family were sitting with no gas and no means to cook food.
My neighbour doesnt even have carpets down so her family must be freezing in winter when they haven't got money to top up their meter

@contrmary

On the point that it might cost someone £100 a day in data, it's true, but you'd have to be a complete idiot to pay that.

My pay as you go sim offers unlimited data for £1 a day, only paid on days you use it. Sure, there might be people to whom £5 a week is a lot of money just to enable their kids to access their schoolwork, but the £100 figure is ridiculous and people who actually pay that deserve what they get.

I think the point is no-one can afford to pay it, hence the children go without online learning because it is not affordable.

Also I don't know what network you are on but in my experience those offers are made to people who are either on contract or on higher monthly PAYG packages. Those on the lower end of the scale are usually not offered such offers.

Also I think people forget being poor is expensive because to have access to WiFi, lower electric, gas rates, devices etc, you need good credit. When you are poor you are more likely to have defaulted on a payment or two and have bad credit. Bad credit means everything must be paid for upfront from the phone, laptop to electric, data. You can get a low monthly fee for WiFi but you need good credit to access it. Being poor means metered gas and electric and paying upfront for it and a premium. It means buying the cheapest phone or device so it being slower or phased out sooner.

When people talk of how low their packages are or how cheap WiFi is, you also need to remember having good credit gives you access to these things.

This is my specialist subject. The digital divide is real - and lockdowns have made it worse. I ran a project to get laptops and wifi to disadvantaged students. In our local secondary there are many children without wifi - for instance where the parents had a poor credit rating, temporary accommodation etc. You can buy mobile wifi routers which are pay monthly, they are £50 to buy and then £30 a month so a lot more expensive than conventional wifi.

In the high school which has a deprived catchment - there are many children sharing one device.

Until now parents have been able to get by using the libraries and community centres for their children to do homework - but these have now closed.

We asked for cash donations and also donations of old laptops. You can wipe the laptops operating system and turn it into a chrome book which is sufficient for most school children's use as most of the education is web based. A laptop that an adult is discarding - for example because it won't hold it's charge without being plugged in is fine for a child working from home.

We have also been buying basic Chromebooks for the children to use - they cost £200 and we lend them out.

some good info here -
national.lgfl.net/smartbuy/devices

we appplied for free data cards for the children from vodafone - that offer is now closed but worth looking at as they did do a second tranche.

www.vodafone.co.uk/mobile/pay-as-you-go-plans/schools-connected?fbclid=IwAR0StuNrcJfMgpYVUxK3IirVhvMI5Fg5nPm-MIHlZhRLAfLdx1AFjMyzb7M

the government pilot scheme to give free data via BT hotspots was a failure.

If anyone wants some more info on how to run a similar project in their school I'm happy to pass on knowledge. The constant delays from the DfE is supplying the promised laptops to disadvantaged students prompted me to act. I had a lot of success getting donations from people outside the school community who could see the benefits - in cash and devices -

When people talk of how low their packages are or how cheap WiFi is, you also need to remember having good credit gives you access to these things.

Irrelevant for PAYG

I don't think you can.get PAYG WiFi.

My broadband is £3pm, but I pay for the phone annually to save 20%. I am affluent enough to be able to do that but most people probably aren't.

I don’t have wifi at home, I have a sim only contract with 100gb data for £20 a month - I connect my daughters ipad to it, as well as my fire stick. The signal is just about strong enough to cope with the google classroom meetings luckily 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

@LakieLady. You mention rents of £300 a week! I assume thats in London and the SE? No-one on basic benefits or in a minimum wage job can afford that. DD worked in London as a qualified nurse, and she had to share accommodation, even on a reasonable salary. One of the reasons she moved north. Even if millions££ were put into social house building, there isn't the space in London for thousands of affordable homes. What's the solution?

I've been to a clothes bank today, and there is a big concern within the charitable section that people simply aren't getting the benefits they are entitled to. Complex applications, no wifi or equipment, poor literacy. There are also those who are simply not entitled to UK benefits. Having a PC isn't on their radar.

@Changi

When people talk of how low their packages are or how cheap WiFi is, you also need to remember having good credit gives you access to these things.

Irrelevant for PAYG

I spoke about BOTH WiFi and PAYG packages. You are conflating two different conversations.

That comment is in reference to those saying that WiFi is affordable if perhaps you actually read it

Sorry. Wrong thread.