Don’t let COVID-19 reverse our hard-won gains

True Potential Chief Executive Daniel Harrison on the urgent need to close the digital divide to keep social mobility progress on track.  

COVID-19 has wreaked terrible damage, costing thousands of lives and destroying businesses and jobs.

It has also disrupted the education of children all over the country as exams have been cancelled and schools closed.

It has been estimated that, as a result of COVID-19, up to eight million children are likely to have missed out on six months or more of education.

These lost months cannot easily be made up and schools have made huge efforts to substitute online learning for the classroom but this can only ever be a damage limitation exercise.

Not only that, but a digital divide that already existed has been made wider, with some children having far greater access to computers and the internet than others. Even where young people have internet access, they may be having to share technology with their siblings or parents.

A recent study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies showed that children from wealthier families spent over 30 per cent more time on home learning than those from poorer families.

Unless we make a massive effort, there is a great danger that COVID-19 will reverse some hard-won gains in social mobility.

Many businesses have sought to help by providing laptops for students who didn’t have them. As soon as we went into lockdown, my firm, True Potential bought dozens of new laptops and reconditioned our surplus machines. 

We have since donated them to primary schools and academies across the North East, with many more to follow. 

However, giving away computers is the easy part and only really scratches the surface of the problem. There is a much bigger prize in reach – both for students and society as a whole – if we can combine access to IT with the skills that lead to good jobs.

My father and True Potential’s chairman David Harrison set up The Harrison Centre for Social Mobility in 2017 to work with organisations that support disadvantaged people into employment.

The Centre works with hundreds of young people at the charity’s home – the Beacon of Light – to provide the tuition and training to help them grow in confidence, gain qualifications, become more work ready and ultimately secure a job. 

The Harrison Centre has invested more than £200,000 in Foundation of Light employability programmes since it opened its learning centre at the Beacon in 2018.

Over the last two years 1,069 young people, aged 13 and over, took courses providing essential skills in ICT/Digital, Managing Finances, Maths and English, Personal and Social Development and Business & Enterprise. Last year, nearly 600 sessions were delivered face-to-face, alongside 85 hours of delivery during lockdown and more than 180 qualifications were achieved with a pass rate of 94.5 per cent across all courses.

As well as the students themselves, businesses have a lot to gain from investing in digital skills and closing the digital divide.

I know first-hand having recruited many graduates to work in our IT and developer departments that sometimes it can be hard to get people with up-to-date skills who understand the latest technology.

I also know that many of them began their interest in IT as a hobby. It was something they fiddled about with in the evenings and on weekends. They became good at coding and developing apps, not because it was their course or job, but because it was their interest. They found a skill that they’ve been able to turn into a career.

That’s why I set up the True Potential Academy to train individuals with no IT experience or qualifications to be coders and developers.

The academy is also open to existing staff who want to turbo-charge their career progress – or switch into a new field.

And there’s no better way to learn, than by doing. We don’t teach endless theory, we just pair up our recruits with our experts, give them the technology and let their creativity and natural ability do the rest.

It is often glibly said that a challenge is an opportunity. In the case of COVID-19 and the issue of social mobility, I believe it genuinely can be.

We must not allow this moment to create further barriers for disadvantaged young people, but we must grasp this as an opportunity to get more people trained on IT and linked up to jobs.

That's how to solve the digital divide and if we do, it’ll be a big win for business, for Britain and for our young people.