Ms Carol Hanney:

On the issue of literacy, people with literacy difficulties are very often hard to reach. We reach people through our apprenticeships and the further education and training colleges. We realise that people need literacy help. Therefore, it is not just the traditional literacy that we talk about in the adult and community base - it is right across the board. We also reach people through English for speakers of other languages, ESOL, courses. During the crisis, this was probably an area in which it was more difficult to reach people. That highlights how important it is that people have access to some forms of digital literacy. There is the issue of training people. As the Deputy said, it is not just about the devices; it is also about people being able to use the devices. That is one of the challenges in our modern society.

On what we learned during the crisis, we learned that it is surprising what people can do when they have to do it. Teachers were telephoning and emailing people. Often they were just telephoning people, talking to them and talking them through their crises. Those with literacy difficulties often have other difficulties and coming back to deal with those difficulties is quite a challenge for them. We learned a great deal during the crisis. We advanced in our own digital literacy as educators and we learned that we can do much more online than we thought could do. That does not mean that face-to-face contact has been replaced, because that is really important. However, now we have an additional resource that we can use both for those with whom we have face-to-face contact and for those with whom we do not have that contact.