The Autumn Budget was a turning point on child poverty. Now it has to close the digital gap in education.

The Budget’s child-poverty reforms are vital, but closing education’s digital gap is now essential to ensure fair access, participation and assessment for all.

Scrapping the two-child benefit limit from April 2026 is one of the most significant anti-poverty moves in recent years. According to the government’s own poverty impact assessment for Budget 2025, removing the cap will mean about 450,000 fewer children in relative low income after housing costs by the final year of the parliament, and around two million children living in households that see their income rise. According to analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility, reported widely by outlets such as Reuters, the reform will cost just over three billion pounds a year by 2029 to 2030. Other summaries from organisations like Which and ITV News indicate that roughly 560,000 families are expected to gain, with an average rise of just over five thousand pounds in their annual Universal Credit.

A secure home is the foundation on which learning rests. Long-running research by organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown that childhood poverty is closely linked to lower educational attainment and weaker labour market outcomes later in life. Independent analysis for the IFS Green Budget, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, has identified abolishing the two-child limit as the single most cost-effective step available to reduce child poverty in this parliament. That matters because the democratisation of education starts with a safe, stable home environment where children can learn, grow and progress.

The digital divide the Budget ignored

But equal opportunity in 2025 also depends on digital equality, and here the Budget was largely silent. According to Ofcom’s Adults Media Use and Attitudes research for 2025, around 94 per cent of adults now have internet access at home, which means about six per cent still do not. A separate Ofcom analysis using its Technology Tracker, summarised by industry reporting early this year, suggests that this translates into roughly 4.5 million adults who do not use the internet at home at all. Ofcom’s own work on barriers to household connectivity adds that around five per cent of people aged sixteen and over have no home connection, with affordability and perceived lack of need both playing a role.

For further education and skills providers, these are not abstract figures. Since the pandemic, colleges, training providers and universities have embedded blended learning and remote assessment into the mainstream. According to sector surveys and case studies from bodies such as Jisc and the Association of Colleges, online platforms, virtual classrooms and digital portfolios are now woven into everyday delivery. That flexibility is valuable, yet it also means that learners without reliable connectivity or a dedicated device are increasingly locked out of core elements of teaching, learning and assessment.

Practitioners see the reality behind the data every day. Learners share a single laptop with siblings or parents. Apprentices try to complete mandatory online modules on older smartphones using pay-as-you-go data. Adult returners draft assignments on borrowed devices that may not be available when deadlines fall. Research by groups such as Good Things Foundation and the Digital Poverty Alliance underlines how costs, device access and skills combine to trap people in digital poverty, even when infrastructure technically exists.

As more qualifications and professional certifications move online, digital inequality becomes an assessment issue as much as an access issue. When an exam assumes stable broadband and high-specification hardware, students without those basics are more likely to face timeouts, dropped connections or incomplete submissions. That raises difficult questions for colleges and awarding bodies about fairness, progression and how to stand behind results when access to basic digital infrastructure is so uneven.

A national plan for digital inclusion

If this Budget marks a serious reset on child poverty, it should be followed by an equally serious national plan on digital inclusion for learners. At minimum, that plan should set a baseline expectation that every learner in compulsory and post-16 education can access a suitable device and a reliable connection outside classroom hours. According to work by Good Things Foundation on a Minimum Digital Living Standard, digital participation now depends on a bundle of essentials, from connectivity and devices to skills and support. A credible response would include targeted grants, social tariffs that actually reach low-income families, and local device schemes delivered with colleges, housing providers and community organisations.

In my work at Invigilator, I see how assessment systems can be designed around these realities. Remote assessment platforms can be built to be data-light and device-agnostic, so that students can sit secure exams on standard laptops and entry-level smartphones, using minimal bandwidth. Progress can be stored locally when connections drop and synced automatically when they return. Identity checks, live risk signals and post-assessment analytics can be combined with human oversight, so that technology strengthens integrity and transparency without shutting out learners whose connectivity is fragile or whose devices are basic. In other words, assessment design can widen participation rather than narrowing it to those with the best kit and the most stable broadband.

Welfare reform can help create the stable home environment that education needs, but it will not by itself remove the structural barriers created by digital access gaps. Without tackling digital poverty alongside the reforms announced in this Budget, there is a real risk of building a fairer income system on top of an inequitable digital foundation. A safe, stable home and a fair shot at digital participation should not be competing priorities. Together, they are the minimum conditions for an education system that genuinely widens opportunity.

By Nic Riemer, CEO of Invigilator