Some lucky school children in Bolton received a boost today when St Catherine’s Academy in Harwood took delivery of the first twenty laptop computers to help them do their homework.

Although children have returned to school this week there is a continuing need for computers in many homes to help them keep up. There is a long standing ‘digital divide’ between the children who have a computer on the one hand and the 1.8 million children across the country who have no such advantage. In addition, since home working by adults continues to be an important feature for many families, children often must juggle for computer time with parents and even brothers and sisters.

Rachael Lucas, the Head Teacher at St Catherine’s said “We are absolutely delighted today to receive 20 laptops from Rotary for our upper Key Stage 2 students. These laptops will support lifelong learning as twenty-first century learning becomes more and more digital. We know that as a profession we have learned so much about digital learning during the most recent lockdown, how to deliver it and what applications are available online to support learning. These laptops will provide support and opportunities as these students move into our secondary phase. Many many thanks indeed to Rotary for this wonderful gift.”
Danielle Duxbury’s two daughters both received laptops from the scheme. She said “The children have had a particularly tough year and one of my daughters even cried last night when I told her what was going on. We are so grateful since this is something I would never be able to do for them. It’s been difficult during lockdown because I have got three children in different school years and home schooling was on my mobile phone, which was very difficult. This has brought them a lot of happiness.”

The successful Laptops4Schools project was set up by four local Rotary Clubs (Turton, Bolton Daybreak, Bolton Lever and Eccles) last month in partnership with Scan Computers in Middlebrook and We Love Laptops in Horwich. Already more than sixty laptops have been donated to the scheme which is refurbishing them to make them suitable for use by children. Thanks to the generosity of the donors and the partners it is possible to supply the laptops free of charge for schools to allocate to their children.

As the computers become available the scheme will be extended to other schools in the Bolton and Eccles areas.

Anyone who wishes to know more about the project or who may wish to help by donating a laptop or contributing to the project’s costs can do so by visiting https://www.laptops4schools.org.uk/.