TECHNOLOGY

Digital access is vital to educational success; however, many regional students lack adequate digital access. A 2024 research in New South Wales on digital inclusion showed the discrepancy very clearly: just around 39% of pupils in regional New South Wales are thought to have enough access to digital devices to learn at home, whereas about 60% of students in Sydney do.
sciencex.com Many households in rural areas can't afford more than one computer or reside in locations with slow broadband. The National Broadband Network made coverage better, but in some small towns, the internet can be slow or unreliable, and some students have to use mobile data or go without the internet after school. During the COVID-19 remote learning times, this gap became brutally clear: some students in the country had to do their homework on printed packets or shared phones because they didn't have internet at home. School Technology Infrastructure: The NSW government has started the Rural Access Gap (RAG) program to boost tech infrastructure in schools because they know there is a digital gap. The RAG program (2020–2023) spent more than $300 million to equip schools in rural areas technology that was "equivalent" to those of schools in cities. Digital.nsw.gov.au also gave out more than 22,000 new gadgets to students, lowering the student-to-device ratio from 1:6 to 1:4, and also got teachers to a 1:1 device ratio. More than 1,000 rural schools got better internet, and today more than 200,000 kids may connect to the internet at school at speeds of at least 5 Mbps. These changes are making a big difference in the classroom. They make it feasible to have digital lessons, do research online, and go on virtual field trips, which weren't conceivable before. The disparity stays the same, though, whether students don't have computers or the internet at home. Teachers say that a lot of kids in the country still do their schoolwork on their parents' phones or not at all because they don't have their own digital connection. This unfairness in technology leads to less engagement and lower accomplishment. Professor Dastyari of the Whitlam Institute said that "it is imperative for every student – regardless of background or location – to have the tools to thrive in an increasingly digital world". Rural pupils will still have trouble with the digital parts of school until that happens.