1 Introduction

The sudden switch to learning exclusively at home during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the extent of low levels of digital inclusion for many low-income and socially disadvantaged families and children in Australia. During a series of lockdowns in states and territories around Australia in 2020 and 2021, schools were only open to children of essential workers and those deemed vulnerable. Many families struggled with access to, and the affordability of, devices and data, along with having the required digital skills and mentoring for students to learn at home. This left many children from low-income families to learn at home without the requisite access to suitable devices, broadband internet connections, and data.

While Australian families have reportedly high levels of access to the internet and devices “with around 95 per cent of families having access to the internet at home …. [and] on average two computers, 2.5 smartphones and 1.6 tablets in the Household” (Lamb et al., 2020), the quality of internet and device access across families is uneven. We know from the Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) that people living on low incomes are amongst the least digitally included Australians (Thomas et al., 2021), and that nearly a fifth of Australian children under the age of 15 are living in poverty. This means nearly a million students in primary and secondary education in Australia need additional support to access appropriate devices and data to be able to undertake learning at home. Moreover:

many low-income Australian households have spent long periods in lockdown without a low cost, high quality, fixed broadband product in the marketplace. Access to affordable devices that are appropriate for online work and education has also emerged as a major challenge. (Thomas et al., 2021, p. 8).

It is important to note that this is not an issue that arose solely because of pandemic, but a longer term, existing challenge for low-income families that has been brought to the fore of national discussion as schooling moved online during COVID-19 lockdowns. Low levels of digital inclusion amongst low-income families has some persistent characteristics; these people have less access to appropriate digital devices and “pay more for their data compared to other families, and have lower levels of digital ability” (Good Things Foundation Australia, 2021). Low-income families are also more likely to be mobile-only households as compared to the general population (Good Things Foundation Australia, 2021) and lack access to appropriate technologies for learning at home like laptops or desktop PCs. With expensive data and limited access to computers for schoolwork, children from low-income families in Australia face challenges for learning at home not experienced by their better-connected peers. The Australian Government recognises that “socially vulnerable children are over-represented among the group of students who are educationally vulnerable”Footnote 1 and this combination of digital and social disadvantage has far-reaching consequences for the educational outcomes of children from low-income families in Australia.

The Government also states “All Australians need access to the technologies and the skills required to use them if they’re to fully take part in social and economic life” (Australian Government, 2018), and education is arguably one of the most important areas of participation. As schools had to rapidly move to remote online, support in Australia for low-income families was ad-hoc, and often delivered via teachers and schools in lieu of any framework or policy response.

As social, government, education and commercial services move rapidly towards ‘digital by default,’ digital inclusion and in particular, digital ability, are critical for social and economic participation in society (Dezuanni & Allan, 2018; Al-Muwil et al., 2019). Digital ability and digital inclusion have been linked to a range of social and economic benefits. Australians who have adequate, affordable access to digital technologies and the knowledge and skills to use them, have better outcomes across life spheres including education, work, finance, health, and well-being (Walton et al., 2013). A rapid review of literature on the effects of events like the COVID-19 pandemic on education by Tarricone et al. (2021, 1) found, “that emergencies impact education in two main ways: endangering children’s wellbeing, and exacerbating unequal learning outcomes…[and] the consequences of these disruptions are not evenly distributed”. The review identifies children from low SES households as particularly at risk of experiencing disruption to their education due to learning at home during the pandemic:

Greater responsibilities are also placed on parents when normal education is disrupted. Parents may need to spend extra time and money to support their children’s education, which can highlight the disparities between the types of supports provided by high and low SES households. Specifically, higher SES parents can be expected to have greater resources to support the education of their children, while children from lower SES households are less likely to have access to necessary resources (e.g., electronic devices, and the internet at home) to support learning. This inequality is intensified by the disparity in human capital, with research showing that a greater proportion of higher education–qualified parents indicate they are confident in directing their children’s learning compared with parents without such qualifications (Cullinane & Montacute, 2020; Di Pietro et al., 2020; UNESCO, 2020c). Increased education responsibilities placed on parents can also interfere with their work responsibilities and undermine their financial ability to support their children’s education (Hall et al., 2020; Reimers & Schleicher, 2020a, b). …. Furthermore, when schools are closed children from lower SES households suffer more because they generally do not have access to the means to support learning outside of school. (Tarricone et al., 2021, pp. 16–17).

Concerns for children’s wellbeing and educational attainment are not isolated to Australia. While, up until the end of 2020, many Australians had experienced relatively short school closures as compared to other nations, New South Wales and Victoria (accounting for over 57% of the population) had extended periods of learning at home. Schools in Australia belong to either the government or non-government (Catholic or Independent) sector, with 70% of schools run by state or territory governments, 18% Catholic and 12% Independent. In general, schools are either primary (Grades P-6), secondary (Grades 7–12) or combined (P-12) with around 66% of students attending government schools, 19% attending Catholic schools and 15% attending Independent schools (ACARA, 2022). Due to the nature of federal and state government funding in Australia, government schools are generally under-resourced as compared to Catholic and Independent schools (Hanrahan, 2017) and have a higher number of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Flack et al., 2020). Learning loss due to school closures disproportionately affects children from lower socio-economic backgrounds, who usually attend under-resourced government schools, and the gap can continue to widen once school resumes (d’Orville, 2020; Galvis & McLean, 2020, pi; Lamb et al., 2020).

This chapter presents an overview of challenges faced by low-income families in relation to their children’s education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on early data from an Australian Research Council-funded project, Advancing digital inclusion in low income Australian families, we discuss selected policy and community responses to address digital exclusion among low-income families with school-aged children when learning moved from schools to homes during COVID-19 lockdowns. We explore how these responses may inform future programs, practises and policies that improve the digital inclusion of children from low-income families.

2 Digital Inclusion Challenges for Low-Income Families

According to the ADII, the average digital inclusion ‘score’ across the Australian population is improving each year, but the gap between those on low and high incomes has widened from 2020 to 2021 (Thomas et al., 2021). Life in low-income families is more challenging in the digital age than for middle-and high-income families and these challenges will intensify as services increasingly become digital-by-default. The Australian Government aims to be one of the world’s top three digital governments by 2025 (Bushell-Embling, 2018). A significant risk of increasing digitisation is that many low-income families will increasingly struggle to access and use digital government services, because they may not be able to afford devices and connections, and/or they may lack the digital skills necessary to navigate platforms and applications. In a digital-by-default environment, low-income families with limited digital access and/or ability risk being unable to meet their obligations to service providers such as Centrelink, potentially suffering further exclusion through cancelled/paused payments or compounding debt. The broader trend of commercial and civic activities being carried out online (banking, shopping, voting, education, tax returns) suggests rapid changes in social and economic activity may disadvantage low-income families more broadly.

Currently, low-income families in Australia often face challenges associated with the three pillars of digital inclusion: access, affordability and ability (Australian Digital Inclusion Alliance, 2020); however affordability is a particular problem for those families who have the least to spend on services. In their report on digital inclusion in Australia, Digital Nation 2021, Good Things Foundation Australia found that:

While the cost of internet access has reduced and overall relative household expenditure on telecommunications is comparable between 2019 and 2020, for low income households the proportion of income spent on internet access has increased every year since 2014 (Good Things Foundation Australia, 2021)

Thomas et al. (2021, p. 6) further observed that “for Australians in the lowest income quintile, most (67%) would have to pay more than 10% of their household income to gain (a quality, reliable) same connection.” Accordingly, many families are mobile-only due to the connectivity costs of a home broadband connection and the flexibility and portability of mobile data that can be topped up as needed and shared among devices. As a result of relying on mobile connection, low-income families with school children “spend about five times more of their household income on data access compared to families in higher income quintiles and compared to national spending” (Good Things Foundation Australia, 2021). Ogle & Law (2020, p. 4) found “that waged poor households are prioritising telecommunications expenditure to ensure they have the basics but are using sub-par services and devices.”

Access to appropriate technology for learning has been further highlighted as a challenge for low-income families during the pandemic. Families rely on mobile phones and devices like tablets to complete schoolwork, along with connecting to essential government services, engaging with others on social media, watching entertainment and other creative and cultural activities using digital media, which are essential for full social and economic participation. International studies (Ragnedda & Mutsvairo, 2018) suggest that digital participation now underlies individuals’ fundamental social competencies to enact identity, language and community (Andreasson, 2015; Helsper, 2008; Warschauer, 2003). Meanwhile, a key UNICEF report (2017) says that digital inclusion bolsters opportunity and justice for the three key groups on which our research is focused: school-aged children (through being able to complete internet-based homework/learning at home); young adults transitioning into the workforce (through gaining skills that enhance employability and access to training/jobs); and parents and caregivers, including grandparents (through increasing their own or their children’s digital opportunities and promoting inter-generational digital mentoring). In the remainder of the chapter, we explore common challenges faced by these groups, recognising that although there are commonalities between low-income families’ digital inclusion experiences, other socio-cultural factors such as gender, occupation, employment status, geography, ethnicity and interests also affect digital inclusion in Australian communities (Thomas et al., 2021).

3 Learning at Home Challenges and Consequences for Low-Income Families

In addition to the challenges posed by access to and the affordability of appropriate connections and devices, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the particular effects of low levels of digital inclusion for low-income families with children who are learning at home. The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (2019, p. 1) suggests for this cohort “it is harder for school age children to do their homework and keep up at school both academically and socially; it is harder for young people to prepare for the post-school world of further training, education or employment. For adults, it is virtually impossible to find opportunities and gain employment.” Relatedly, the Australian Government’s Digital Economy Strategy (Australian Government, 2021) invests in workplace development initiatives that demand “high-level digital skills” (e.g., graduate programs for artificial intelligence and emerging technologies). Given that children from low-income families perform significantly less well than children from middle-and high-income families on ICT literacy tests (ACARA, 2014; Lamb et al., 2020), low-income school leavers will likely be disadvantaged in a workforce in which digital skills are increasingly demanded by employers, and where there is high demand for technology workers (Deloitte, 2019).

Low-income parents and caregivers face an ongoing challenge to provide their children with expensive technology for school, and to provide them with the necessary advice and support to successfully participate in education with digital technologies (Katz et al., 2017). And apart from providing devices like tablets or laptops for schools with BYOD (bring your own device) policies, parents are also faced with additional educational costs for resources (including technology) when children are learning at home. A UK study found parents from more affluent families spent more money on educational resources when learning moved to the home during the pandemic, than those from less well-off households (Cullinane & Montacute, 2020). This is concerning because it points to further exacerbation of the divide between high- and low- income families in terms of student’s access to essential digital resources for learning. Moreover, In an environment where there is an increasing emphasis on children using digital devices in the classroom and for homework (Dobozy, 2014; Graham & Sahlberg, 2020), children from middle and higher income households will pull even further ahead in their digital skills development from their peers from poorer families, owing to daily engagement with digital technologies.

It is also important that families’ digital inclusion challenges are not considered in isolation from the wider social and educational barriers they face. The digital literacy and education of parents and care-givers impacts the amount of learning support they are able to give their children at home. Furthermore, “in addition to the fact that parents of disadvantaged children may not have the skills or experience to support their child in home learning, children and young people living in low-income households have access to fewer books and learning materials in the home and more limited access to support and resources that help form a foundation for learning” (Lamb et al., 2020). People on low-incomes are also more likely than the general population to have low levels of media literacy (Notley et al., 2021). Digital and social disadvantage is often compounded in low-income families who face inter-generational challenges to digital inclusion (Notley & Foth, 2008). As Lamb et al. observe in their Victoria (Australia) study:

While the vast majority of high SES parents … have themselves completed school and in many cases tertiary study, many low SES parents (41.6 per cent of mothers and 44.4 per cent of fathers, according to PISA estimates) have not completed secondary school or even reached the upper secondary level. This may explain why many students from low SES families in 2018 reported that across the school year they hadn’t worked with their mother (47.0 per cent) or their father (56.3 per cent) on schoolwork. These rates were more than double that for high SES students. It indicates that support for learning from home is much more of a challenge for them. (Lamb et al., 2020)

Finally, there has been significant media coverage of the multiple stresses parents and caregivers face when trying to combine working from home during lockdown with supporting their child’s learning. However low-income families face the challenge of parents and caregivers having to work outside the home in essential roles without the option of working from home (Hall et al., 2021). This leaves students from low-income families without another layer of support for learning from home during the pandemic.

3.1 Families Living Rurally or Remotely

Most of Australia’s population lives in the south-east and south-west of the country, with relatively good connections to telecommunications infrastructure. However, for the families who live the country’s north and interior, connections are often poor and expensive (Marshall at el., 2020a). Rural and remote low-income families, who are often who are mobile only users, face additional challenges as mobile services are limited; while over 99% of Australians have mobile phone reception, only one-third of Australia’s land area has coverage (Good Things Foundation, 2021). Families also have less access to essential social infrastructure that supports digital inclusion and learning, like libraries and schools (Tarricone et al., 2021, p. 19; Marshall et al., 2020, b). Remote Indigenous communities are amongst the least digitally included in Australia, with many children (including non-Indigenous children from remote areas) often needing to attend boarding school due to a lack of secondary schooling options in their area. Children returning home to low-income households during school closures (and during holiday periods) often do not have access to the infrastructure and resources to support their schooling while at home (O’Bryan & Rogers, 2021).

3.2 Children Learning at Home in Australia During the COVID 19 Pandemic

Compared to other countries around the world, Australian schools have remained largely open during the COVID-19 pandemic, however lockdowns throughout the country have exposed the difficulties many families face when children are learning at home. As Australian states and territories have taken different approaches to managing the pandemic, schools have had to adjust to extended periods of delivering the curriculum remotely, or pivoting quickly to learning at home for short, sharp lockdowns. Lamb et al. observed that:

Most schools across Australia were completely unprepared for the coronavirus and for moving to virtual learning. Unequal internet access is just the tip of the iceberg of the challenges some students face in doing their schooling online. (Lamb et al., 2020)

This experience was common among low-income families who were expected to access and complete schoolwork that was made available online through school portals and education sites like Queensland’s, The Learning Place. A lack of policy leadership at both federal and state levels, is compounded by the complexity of a national curriculum being largely administered at the state level, and schools were left to individually develop strategies and operationalise plans for students to learn at home. One approach was for schools to use commercial platforms already in use like Google Drive and Microsoft Teams (Reimers & Schleicher, 2020a). Where schools couldn’t move easily to these platforms, they relied entirely on paper-based resources to ensure equity across their student population. In some schools in Australia “teachers were delivering or posting stationery to students to help prevent them falling behind. ‘[Research] found that about one-third of the public school teachers are actually providing pen-and-paper packages as a backup for a lot of students, where there may be difficulties with wi-fi and connectivity’” (Duffy & Kent, 2020). Teachers became a vital support for children in low-income families, identifying who needed extra assistance and providing material resources for children experiencing digital inclusion.

Education insight company Pinto Professional Learning surveyed more than 3000 teachers across Australia and New Zealand in 2020, matching Australian responses with Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) data from 2018. Researchers found “strong evidence that children attending the least advantaged schools were more adversely affected by the shift to online learning than others and that the shift therefore may have compounded existing inequities in the school system” (Flack et al., 2020, p. 4). The same survey revealed the main concern of teachers from less advantaged schools was students’ lack of access to devices and technology (Flack et al., 2020). Across all three digital inclusion pillars of access, affordability and ability, low-income students face challenges to participation that are amplified when education moves to learning at home.

4 Australian Responses to Supporting Low-Income Families Learning at Home

All states in Australia had a period of learning at home from March 2020 when a national state of emergency was declared and all states went into lockdown, however New South Wales and Victoria were the only states with extended lockdowns through 2020 and 2021. In this section we present case studies from two communities that we are working with on our project, Advancing digital inclusion in low income Australian families: one a city suburb in Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales; and one from the outskirts of a regional city in Queensland, the most decentralised state on the mainland.

4.1 Case 1: New South Wales

Community Overview

  • Population: 19,400

  • 13% of households do not have access to the internet at home

  • 55% of students are in the lowest Socio-Educational Advantage quartile

  • 98% of students have a language background other than English (Table 5.1)

Table 5.1 Community 1: Australia
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New South Wales (NSW) has had different COVID-19 restrictions in place throughout the state at various times during the pandemic. In comparison to other Australian states NSW had looser restrictions and took longer to implement them resulting in quick transmission across Sydney. The community we are working with was subject to the tightest restrictions in the state, which were implemented according to local government areas (LGAs). NSW’s approach was criticised for having tougher restrictions, for longer, in less affluent LGAs (Rachwani, 2021). Low-income families struggled to do online learning with affordability and ability being prominent barriers to digital inclusion in the community.

The difficulties families experienced in accessing appropriate devices and affordable data for learning demonstrate the work Australia has to do to ensure everyone can “fully take part in social and economic life.” NSW leads the country in policies and programs for improving digital inclusion for its residents (see Table 5.2), yet resources still do not meet community need. NSW provided over 22,000 devices and dongles to vulnerable students who would otherwise not have access during the pandemic, but this only met the needs of little over a quarter of an estimated 80,000 students in need (Zerbib et al., 2021). Timing of device and data provision was also an issue for schools and students who have been expected to quickly pivot to online learning during school closures. Gore et al. (2020) found “teachers experienced either: 1) not receiving this additional support; 2) receiving the support too late, ‘we qualified for 500 devices after we completed the questionnaire. We received 50, but we received them halfway through Term 2’.”

Table 5.2 NSW Policy Responses & Funding related to digital inclusion and school closures
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In addition to the government responses outlined in Table 5.2, and the efforts of teachers working directly with students, ad-hoc support was provided by a variety of social infrastructure organisations. The NSW Public Education Foundation supplied grants between $1500 and $2000 to around a third of the 1200 students who apply (Duffy, 2020). Narang Bir-rong Aboriginal Corporation (a NSW-based organisation that provides care and support programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and their families) currently has “at least 200 children … without laptops, iPads or computers, preventing them from participating in online learning” and the organisation is calling for donations and partnering with a local IT company to ensure they are suitable for children to use (Narang Bir-rong Aboriginal Corporation, 2021). Children’s charity Variety runs a Tech 4 School Grant that “provides a technology pack to students facing financial hardship to ensure they are not disadvantaged due to disruptions to schools during the COVID-19 pandemic” and focuses on the areas of NSW most affected by previous crises like the bushfires (Variety, 2022).

4.2 Case 2: Queensland

Community Overview

  • Population: 4100

  • 23% of households do not have access to the internet at home

  • 61% of students are in the lowest Socio-Educational Advantage quartile

  • 25% of students have a language background other than English

  • 38% Indigenous students (Table 5.3)

Table 5.3 Community 2 profile
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Queensland’s approach differed significantly from NSW and required schools and students to respond quickly to lockdowns that were largely concentrated in the state’s South-East. As such the community we are working with has only had one extended lockdown and one snap lockdown throughout the pandemic, but both served to illuminate the extent of digital exclusion in regional areas in the state. In Queensland nearly one-third of students “reported receiving mainly paper-based learning materials during the lockdown” and 15% of students in the community did not have access to a computer laptop or tablet device and the percentage of students without access to a device and the internet during the lockdown was higher in lower socio-economic areas (The State of Queensland, Queensland Audit Office, 2021).

Queensland also lags behind other states in internet access in schools, with 98% of students getting internet speeds less than 250 kbps in the classroom. Education Queensland’s benchmarking for internet speed in schools is 25 kbps per student which is 200 times less than NSW’s benchmark speed (The State of Queensland, Queensland Audit Office, 2021). At schools with a lower ICSEA score, children tend to have less access to technology and devices at home than children from schools with a higher ICSEA score. At one Queensland school, 60 percent of its families do not have regular internet access, placing increased importance on quality access at school. During the pandemic, this school’s Principal noted most parents collected paper packs (Hartley, 2020). Queensland children from low-income families who rely on access to technology and the internet at school are therefore at a significant disadvantage to their interstate peers.

In contrast to NSW, Education Queensland did not have a clear policy response to supporting low-income families to access the necessary resources for online learning at home. The Queensland Government’s policy responses to digital challenges during the pandemic focused on small business, skills and rural and remote connectivity. Queensland Government did, however, partner with national television broadcaster Channel Seven to air two hours of primary-level educational TV three mornings a week during the first extended lockdown (Queensland Government, 2020), but there was no state-wide response to the challenges faced by low income families and children learning at home during the pandemic.

5 Social Infrastructure to Support Learning at Home During the Pandemic and beyond

While telecommunications providers have made some important steps to improve affordable internet access during COVID-19, such as hardship arrangements and government-agreed upon principles, these initiatives are largely fixed-term and do not provide a long-term solution. Community-based and not-for-profit organisations have supported people to stay connected during COVID-19 restrictions by providing affordable access through data-enabled digital device rentals and remote digital skills and social support by phone, when online was not possible. (Good Things Foundation Australia, 2021)

The federal government announced a $50 million package designed to help internet service providers (ISPs) provide accessible home broadband to low-income families with school age children (NBN Co, 2020; Cormann & Fletcher, 2020) who were not connected, or had let their connection lapse for more than 18 months. The discount scheme was to be delivered by the retail ISPs, however the final product varied across different service providers, if they created a specific low-income at all, and was time-limited. Data from the three months following this announcement shows an additional 383,257 new services were connected or upgraded (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, 2020), however it’s unclear how many new connections were making use of low-income products and how many connections were the result of large parts of the population moving to working from home, where they may have previously relied on a mobile or slower connection. Additionally, as the research and case studies reported here show, many low-income families were still relying on inadequate connections and devices to learn at home, which suggest that any low-income product that was made available, was not widely taken up.

Organisations throughout Australia are left to largely support low-income families across the three pillars of digital inclusion, access, affordability and ability, both prior to and during the pandemic, which is ongoing in Australia. In an effort to address the learning loss that can persist when digitally excluded children return to school (Kaffenberger, 2021) programs like The Smith Family’s Catch-Up Learning Pilot ensured students that needed extra support received a device and data to learn online. Students involved in the pilot were provided with one-to-one online tutoring sessions in literacy and numeracy with qualified teachers (The Smith Family, 2020). The success of the pilot in improving student outcomes demonstrates the impact that access to technology along with ongoing support has for students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds who are most likely to suffer from school closures (Cullinane & Montacute, 2020). Similarly, The Brotherhood of St Laurence ran study support groups online (Temple, 2020) and Save The Children Australia did resource drops to vulnerable families to keep students engaged with learning (Save the Children, 2022). In addition to this, the large telecommunications companies in Australia have been partnering with governments and organisations like The Smith Family to provide dongles, data and platforms to enable learning from home (Temple, 2020; Ebeid, 2020). Programs such as those listed above have built on existing work being undertaken by non-government organisations to support the educational needs of children in low-income families, whose digital exclusion is an entrenched problem that has been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

6 Conclusion

Schools in Australia were left largely to their own devices in lieu of any coherent national policy or advice to meet the digital educational needs of vulnerable children from low-income families. There are ad-hoc programs to support low income families with children learning at home, but no clear federal policy responses to ensure disadvantaged students can keep up with their peers. State-based responses to address the needs of children in low-income families learning at home during the pandemic are varied, and responsibility for ensuring low income and disadvantaged students have access to devices and data is devolved to school principals. Non-government community service providers are helping low-income families access devices and data, but cannot meet the needs of an increasing number of families who need assistance with learning at home.

Learning at home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia was difficult for many families on low incomes, but the challenges they faced are not isolated to the pandemic. Children from low-income families with limited access to data, appropriate devices, and the ability and support to use them have historically experienced worse educational outcomes than their better-connected peers (Echazarra & Schwabe, 2018). Nonetheless these students can improve their achievement (and even exceed their peers) with access to devices and data and the support to use them effectively. Promoting digital inclusion—in particular digital ability (knowledge, skills and capabilities)—in low-income families will improve people’s lives and promote social cohesion through building digital capacity for participation in daily life, education, work, and civil society.

Furthermore, increasing digital inclusion of low-income families will yield intergenerational benefits to Australia, helping to future-proof our workforce. According to the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (2019), flow-on benefits of greater digital inclusion in Australia at the macroeconomic and sectorial level include: (1) uptake of online government services, saving the Australian Government $20.5billion in the next decade and customers 163 million hours per annum; (2) use of telehealth services which, according to the CSIRO (Celler et al., 2018), could result in reduced spending in Medicare Benefit Scheme (45% reduction) and Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme (25% reduction), as well as a 50% reduction in hospitalisation and a 40% reduction in patient mortality, and;(3) engagement of students from low socio-economic backgrounds in online training and digitally-enabled pathways to employment could help alleviate the fiscal cost of disengaged youth over their lifetime, which had been conservatively estimated at $18.8 billion, with social costs estimated at $50.5 billion and a deadweight loss of $1.5 billion associated with tax and transfers (Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, 2019).

Improving the digital inclusion of low-income families requires investment in schools as when schools are well resourced, switching between in-class and home learning is easier and can have benefits for students and their parents and carers who feel more engaged with class content and teachers (Bubb & Jones, 2020). However, “high-quality provision is useless if children cannot access it, and another significant challenge is providing all pupils with the equipment needed to learn online, as well as ensuring all have the stable internet connection necessary to access that content” (Cullinane & Montacute, 2020). This will require significant investment in physical and social infrastructure across Australia and a coordinated effort across government and the social sector to meet the digital inclusion needs of low-income families to ensure that all children learning at home have affordable and appropriate access and support.