Connectivity is only part of the story. What happens when the device itself is the barrier to learning?
Digital Equity Isn’t Just About Internet — It’s About Access
For the past decade, the conversation about digital equity in education has been almost entirely focused on connectivity. Get every student online. Close the broadband gap. Fund the infrastructure. It’s an important conversation, but it’s only half the story.
Because here’s what happens when you give a student internet access on a device that can barely run a browser: nothing changes.
A laptop with four gigabytes of RAM struggling to load a Google Doc, a machine that takes eight minutes to boot, a device so old it can’t run the applications the school has licensed — these aren’t edge cases. They’re the daily reality for students in under-resourced schools across Australia. And no amount of bandwidth fixes that.
The device is the barrier
Digital equity isn’t a single problem. It’s a stack of problems, and connectivity sits at the top of a very long list. Underneath it you’ll find device quality, device availability, software licensing costs, IT support capacity, and the simple question of whether the hardware a student is using is actually capable of the tasks being asked of it.
When we talk about closing the digital divide, we tend to measure success by whether a student has internet access at home or at school. We rarely ask whether the device they’re using is fast enough to participate in a live video lesson, capable of running the STEM software their teacher just assigned, or reliable enough to submit an assignment before it crashes.
For students in well-funded schools, these questions don’t arise. Their devices are replaced on a regular cycle, maintained by dedicated IT staff, and specced to handle whatever the curriculum demands. For students in schools that can’t compete on procurement, the gap isn’t just about access. It’s about capability.
The hidden inequality in the upgrade cycle
The forced hardware upgrade cycle that accompanies every major operating system change hits under-resourced schools hardest. When Microsoft ends support for an operating system, well-funded schools buy new devices. Schools that can’t afford to do that are left managing a fleet of increasingly unsupported hardware, running software that is no longer receiving security patches, on devices that are slowly falling behind the demands of modern education technology.
This isn’t a technology problem. It’s an equity problem that technology is making worse.
Rethinking what access actually means
Real digital equity means every student has a device that is capable, maintained, and fit for purpose — regardless of what postcode their school is in or how large their IT budget is.
That doesn’t have to mean every school buys new hardware every three years. It means being smarter about the hardware we already have. Linux-based systems can extend the productive life of existing devices significantly, running faster and more securely on older hardware than proprietary operating systems. Open-source software eliminates licensing costs that eat into already stretched budgets. Refurbished and repurposed devices, properly configured and supported, can give students in under-resourced schools access to capable technology at a fraction of the cost of new hardware.
We built a fully functioning classroom of 20 laptops for $2,000. Every device was considered obsolete by its previous owner. Every one of them is now giving a student access to technology that actually works.
Connectivity matters. But a fast internet connection on a broken device is still a broken education. Real access means the whole stack works — and right now, for too many students, it doesn’t.