The Scottish Government said every school-aged child would receive a digital device by 2026. Its latest report records widespread shared provision, leaves councils unnamed and contains figures that cannot be fully reconciled from the published text.
In 2021, the Scottish Government announced that every school pupil in Scotland would be provided with a laptop or tablet.
The commitment was intended to cover approximately 700,000 children by the end of the parliamentary session in 2026. Where necessary, pupils were also to receive an internet connection to support their learning.
Five years later, the Government has published no final national account showing that the promise was delivered.
A report released on 29 July 2026 says that 21 of the 31 councils included in its analysis, or 67.7 per cent, do not provide one-to-one devices across every school year. Pupils in those areas may instead rely upon shared classroom sets, pools of equipment held within schools or devices supplied by their own families.
The councils are not named.
The report therefore establishes that provision remains unequal, but prevents parents from determining where each level of provision exists.
What Was Originally Promised?
The wording used in 2021 was clear.
The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government said it would “provide a digital device for every school-aged child”, helping an estimated 700,000 children by 2026.
A government announcement issued weeks earlier described the equipment as a laptop or tablet. It said work to provide one to every school pupil had begun.
The background to the announcement used slightly different language, saying all pupils would have “access to an appropriate digital device”. That difference between providing a device and providing access would later become important.
The original announcement did not suggest that a mobile telephone would be sufficient. It referred specifically to laptops and tablets suitable for educational work.
What Does One-To-One Provision Mean?
The 2026 report does not provide a formal definition of one-to-one provision.
Its survey asked councils to identify each year group for which they had provided “1:1 devices to learners”. The report contrasts that provision with shared class sets, school equipment pools and bring-your-own-device arrangements.
In this context, one-to-one provision means that a device is allocated for the use of an individual learner rather than shared among several pupils.
It does not necessarily mean that the child owns the device. Nor does the report establish whether each individually allocated laptop or tablet may be taken home.
Access to equipment and connectivity at home was asked about separately. A council could therefore report individual provision in school without the published report establishing that the device was available to the pupil outside school hours.
What Did The Councils Report?
All 32 Scottish councils completed the Education Scotland survey during 2025. One authority declined permission for its response to be included in the published analysis, leaving 31 responses.
The report says 21 councils do not provide one-to-one devices across all year groups. Other pupils obtain access through arrangements that vary both between councils and, in some cases, between schools in the same authority.
Reported ratios ranged from one device for every pupil to one device shared among six pupils. One council reported a ratio of one device for every 15 children in nursery settings, although early learning and childcare was formally outside the statutory scope of the report.
The alternatives included class sets, pooled equipment and bring-your-own-device schemes. One council warned that families with more than one child might not possess enough suitable equipment and that private devices might lack the software required by schools.
Finance was the most commonly reported barrier. Sixteen councils cited funding, including the absence of government support for moving towards one-to-one provision and the cost of replacing devices as they age. Councils also identified maintenance, infrastructure and rural internet connectivity as continuing problems.
The Published Numbers Do Not Fully Reconcile
The report contains an unresolved inconsistency.
It says 21 of the 31 councils do not provide one-to-one devices across all year groups. Arithmetically, that would leave ten councils providing them throughout the school years covered by the report.
However, the preceding paragraph says that ten councils identified the year groups covered by their one-to-one programmes. All ten covered P6 to S6, five extended provision to P4 and P5, and only two included the lower-primary years of P1, P2 and P3.
Those statements cannot all describe complete P1-to-S6 provision unless they relate to different subsets of councils or were interpreted differently by respondents. The report does not explain the distinction.
The underlying survey asked councils to select each individual year group receiving one-to-one devices, including an option for “none”. The Government has not published the completed questionnaires or a council-level table that would allow the discrepancy to be resolved.
Modern Scot is therefore not interpreting the report as proof that ten councils provide individual devices throughout P1 to S6. The only safe conclusion is the one explicitly stated by the Government: 21 respondents said they did not provide one-to-one equipment across all year groups, while the more detailed year-group figures remain unclear.
The Councils Remain Anonymous
The national report does not identify which authority supplied any individual answer.
It does not name the 21 councils without universal one-to-one provision, the councils relying upon bring-your-own-device arrangements, the 16 citing financial barriers or the authorities reporting the weakest device ratios.
It also does not identify the ten councils that said they had not ensured their most deprived families possessed both a device and internet connectivity at home.
Thirteen councils reported providing both devices and connectivity to their most deprived families. Seven reported access to devices without also confirming connectivity, while one reported connectivity without confirming a device. Ten reported that both had not been ensured.
These are materially different levels of support. The decision to publish them only as national totals prevents parents, councillors and the public from comparing local provision.
Separate Council Records Show A Patchwork
Although the national responses are anonymous, individual councils have published information about their own programmes.
Midlothian Council says its £10.5 million Equipped for Learning project provides all school-aged pupils with a digital device. More than 15,000 pupils are reported to have equal access to the programme.
Glasgow City Council provides individual iPads from P6 to S6, with shared devices from P1 to P5 and within early-years settings.
Edinburgh’s Empowered Learning programme also provides personal devices from P6 to S6, while younger pupils use iPads allocated on a shared basis.
Scottish Borders Council provides iPads to pupils from P4 to S6 and class sets for P1 to P3 and early-years children. The council states that its £16 million programme was funded entirely from its own budget rather than specific Scottish Government funding.
These examples cannot be matched reliably to the anonymous 2025 survey. They were published at different times and do not necessarily use identical definitions. They do demonstrate that a child’s access depends substantially upon where the child attends school and how much the council has chosen or been able to invest.
What Did The Scottish Government Provide?
Before the universal promise was made, the Scottish Government provided councils with £25 million during the pandemic in 2020–21.
That funding produced 72,000 devices and 14,000 internet connections after school buildings closed.
In May 2024, the Government was asked through freedom of information legislation how many devices it had provided under the commitment made in 2021.
Its response stated that the Scottish Government had issued no devices between April 2021 and the date of the request.
The response referred instead to 280,000 devices distributed by councils by December 2022. That total included the 72,000 devices financed by the earlier pandemic programme.
The Government also said it held no more recent information on the number of devices issued by councils or how much local funding they had contributed.
That does not mean that no pupils received computers after 2021. Councils continued to purchase and distribute equipment through their own programmes.
It does mean that, three years after announcing a national commitment, the Scottish Government could not identify any devices it had issued under that commitment and did not hold a current national count of council provision.
What Happened To The Funding?
Several large funding figures have been associated with the policy, but they do not all describe money reserved solely for laptops and tablets.
The 2022–23 Scottish Budget included £15 million for the infrastructure required to provide a device for every school-aged child.
The Government’s accounts later said that “discovery work” had examined the condition of digital infrastructure in schools. That work ended in December 2022, while the remainder of the commitment was still being scoped. Capital funding for the following year was reduced after the Emergency Budget Review.
A separate capital review referred to £140 million between 2023–24 and 2025–26. That figure covered both the rollout of pupil devices and improvements to school infrastructure. It should not be described as £140 million allocated solely for computers.
The public record examined for this article does not contain a single reconciliation showing the amount originally planned, the amount retained after budget reductions, the final expenditure, the organisations receiving it, the equipment purchased and the number of pupils supported.
The published record does not establish that public money disappeared. It shows that announced funding was reduced, delayed, broadened to include infrastructure and ultimately detached from the universal device promise.
In accounting terms, the money is not proven missing. What is missing is the public audit trail connecting the sums announced to the equipment delivered.
It is therefore not possible to conclude from the published documents that a particular sum disappeared. It is possible to conclude that the Government has not published a clear programme account connecting its successive financial announcements with devices delivered to children.
The Universal Policy Was Replaced
In December 2023, the Scottish Government changed its approach.
The 2024–25 Budget replaced universal pupil provision with £10 million of targeted device and connectivity support for disadvantaged households with children. Funding was to be delivered through the Connecting Scotland programme rather than distributed to councils for one device per pupil.
The change may have directed support towards families in greatest need, but it was not the same policy as the 2021 promise. The universal commitment had been replaced before reaching its 2026 deadline.
The Government’s child poverty progress report for 2025–26 now records the school-age digital access commitment as having been aligned with a broader strategic approach to technology in schools.
The same report says Connecting Scotland launched two digital-inclusion funds in October 2025 worth approximately £1.4 million. They support local projects and work to develop access to online services. The report does not present those funds as a complete account of the earlier £10 million allocation or state how many pupils received laptops or tablets through them.
What The Evidence Establishes
The evidence does not show that Scotland’s schools lack digital technology. Councils have invested millions of pounds, and substantial numbers of pupils have individual laptops or tablets.
It does establish that provision is not nationally consistent.
The Scottish Government promised in 2021 to provide a device for every school-aged child by 2026. It subsequently issued no devices directly under that commitment during the period covered by its 2024 freedom of information response, changed the policy to targeted household support and published a 2026 report in which most councils said they did not provide one-to-one equipment across every year group.
The Government has not named the councils behind the results. It has not published the completed responses. Its detailed figures on year-group provision cannot be fully reconciled from the report, and the various funding announcements have not been brought together in a clear final account.
Responsibility should not be transferred automatically to individual councils. They did not make the national promise, and several funded substantial programmes from their own resources.
The promise was made nationally. The provision became local. Five years later, the public still cannot see a complete account of what was delivered, where it was delivered or how the money announced alongside it was ultimately used.
Reporting Note
The Scottish Government published the council survey results only in aggregate. Modern Scot has not attributed anonymous responses to individual councils. Councils are named only where their provision is confirmed by separately published local-authority records.
Sources
Scottish Government — Devices For 700,000 Children
https://www.gov.scot/news/devices-for-700-000-children/
Scottish Government — A Fairer, Greener Scotland: Programme For Government 2021 To 2022
https://www.gov.scot/publications/fairer-greener-scotland-programme-government-2021-22/pages/5/
Scottish Government — Readiness For Remote Learning: Report 2025 To 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/readiness-remote-learning-report-25-26/
Scottish Government — Readiness For Remote Learning: Provision Of Devices And Connectivity
https://www.gov.scot/publications/readiness-remote-learning-report-25-26/pages/5/
Scottish Government — Readiness For Remote Learning: Survey Questionnaire
https://www.gov.scot/publications/readiness-remote-learning-report-25-26/pages/8/
Scottish Government — Free Digital Devices Provided To Pupils In Scotland: FOI Release 202400409496
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400409496/
Scottish Government — Scottish Budget 2022 To 2023: Education And Skills
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2022-23/pages/8/
Scottish Government — Consolidated Accounts For The Year Ended 31 March 2023
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-government-consolidated-accounts-year-ended-31-march-2023/
Scottish Government — Outcome Of The Targeted Review Of The Capital Spending Review
https://www.gov.scot/publications/outcome-targeted-review-capital-spending-review-updated-spending-allocations-2023-24-2025-26/pages/4/
Scottish Government — Scottish Budget 2024 To 2025: Education And Skills
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2024-25/pages/9/
Scottish Government — Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan: Progress Report 2025 To 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/tackling-child-poverty-delivery-plan-progress-report-2025-26/pages/8/
Midlothian Council — Equipped For Learning
https://www.midlothian.gov.uk/info/691/performance_and_spending/841/transforming_how_we_work/2
Glasgow City Council — Connected Learning Programme
https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/article/14789/Connected-Learning-Programme
City Of Edinburgh Council — Roll Out Of Digital Devices For Pupils Underway
https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/news/article/13397/roll-out-of-digital-devices-for-pupils-underway
Scottish Borders Council — Inspire Learning Frequently Asked Questions
https://www.scotborders.gov.uk/schools-learning/inspire-learning-faqs
