Vodafone UK Gift Free Mobile Broadband to 250,000 School Kids

Mobile operator Vodafone UK has announced that it will offer free Data SIMs, packed with a 30GB (GigaByte) allowance that is valid for 90 days, to help 250,000 primary and secondary school children to stay connected with their education this winter. The move may help to mitigate some of the disruption caused by COVID-19.

The Vodafone schools.connected programme will essentially give schools the ability order the data SIMs, which will then be given to pupils who find it “difficult to access education from home” because they don’t have the right broadband ISP connectivity.

Obviously, such SIMs will still need to be able to receive a good mobile broadband (4G, 5G etc.) signal of their own in order to be effective, which will vary from place to place. On top of that those who receive the SIMs will still need a device to put them in (e.g. mobile router, laptop, tablet, smartphone etc.) and that’s not something this programme will include (some past schemes have included such kit).

Nick Jeffery, CEO of Vodafone UK, said:

“Our focus throughout this crisis has been keeping the UK connected. We know many hundreds of thousands of children in the UK can’t access education from home because they don’t have the right connectivity – this means children already at a disadvantage could fall further behind.

We want to help and so have created this emergency support package for 250,000 children and young people. We encourage schools to apply to the Vodafone schools.connected programme as soon as possible.

Together, we can ensure no child is left behind.”

Each school will be eligible for a maximum number of SIMs and those quotas are set to be based on the proportion of pupils on free school meals (this is the most consistent data available to Vodafone). The SIMs will also come with age-restricted internet content filtering, for obvious reasons. Schools can apply here.