THE Welsh Government will invest a further £15 million in educational technology for schools in the next financial year.

The investment is part of the Hwb EdTech programme, which has already seen an investment of more than £92 million by the Welsh Government over the last two years.

This latest investment is planned to further support the transformation of digital infrastructure of all maintained schools in Wales.

Funding will also be used to ensure ongoing MiFi connectivity for digitally excluded learners, to the end of the current school year in July.

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According to the Welsh Government, the Hwb EdTech programme has:

  • Provided more than 128,000 devices since the start of the pandemic, with another 54,000 planned to be rolled out in the coming weeks;
  • Funded software which has allowed around 10,000 re-purposed devices to be issued to ‘digitally excluded’ learners;
  • Provided 10,848 MiFi devices for learners without internet access at home;
  • Enabled local authorities to purchase more than 300,000 digital infrastructure products, including cabling, switches and WiFi devices.

Kirsty Williams, the education minister, said: “This last year has brought into sharp focus how important technology is to our schools and our learners.

“I’m really pleased that, following significant investment in preceding years, including the development of our world-leading Hwb platform, we’ve been in a strong position to continue learning remotely this year.

“The improvements we’ve made to digital infrastructure in schools will help our learners prepare for the new curriculum for Wales over the coming years.”