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The Department for Education (DfE) will meet its pledge to deliver 1.3m free��laptops for remote lockdown education, just��as schools reopen to all pupils next week, new figures suggest.

In the past two weeks, the DfE has delivered around 160,000 laptops at a rate of 80,000 per week, which is a slightly higher delivery rate than previously -��up from 70,000 in the last week recorded before half term.��

News: Thousands of school laptops set to arrive after 8 March

Related:��Schools can order ‘top-up’ laptops

Free laptops:��DfE delivery rate drops every week this term

The total delivered stood��at 1,217,194 on Sunday, meaning that are still 82,806 laptops to be delivered before the 1.3 million target is reached.��

The laptops were intended to bridge the “digital divide”, helping students who did not have access to a device at home during school closures in the third national lockdown.

The rollout of devices to students has been slow-moving, with fears last��month that thousands of laptops were set to arrive after the school reopening date on March 8.

In January, nearly a fifth of headteachers reported that laptops provided to their pupils by the��government had��not worked as required.