PROVIDING young people with computers isn’t exotic. So said Kevin Rudd, at the Labor campaign launch on Wednesday.

It certainly isn’t at Abbotsleigh, an Anglican girls’ school in Sydney’s north, which is totally “wired”, meaning it has both broadband and wireless technology available to every parent, teacher and student.

Headmistress Judith Poole said Abbotsleigh was not a “laptop” school, “basically because, there are security issues, with girls carrying the laptops to and from school”.

Instead, the school has a laptop trolley that holds 12 laptops. For a class of 24, a teacher will wheel in two trolleys. The girls take them down, open them up, and are connected. The school also has eight computer labs.

“It’s one of the things I’m passionate about,” said Mrs Poole, a former IT professional. “It’s an extremely important movement.”

But it is not one in which all students participate. With five boys and another child on the way, Cathy Shanahan has welcomed the idea of a computer for every school child.

There is no computer in the family’s home at Tregear in far western Sydney. Ms Shanahan said with so many mouths to feed she simply couldn’t afford one.

She said John Howard’s proposal of a rebate scheme was too complicated and would take too long and she would like to see her boys have the opportunity now.

“My eldest is 13 and he’s getting to the age where he really needs a computer to do his homework,” she said.

“Having five boys, I don’t have time to teach them and I would rather they were in schools where the teachers have the qualifications to teach them. It would really help them, especially if they had the teachers to show them how to use the computers.”

While there is a computer room at the local public school the children attend, access is always a problem.

Ms Shanahan’s only criticism of Mr Rudd’s proposal is that it doesn’t start early enough and she would like to see her kids having access to computers from kindergarten.

“Whatever jobs they end up in, it will help them,” she said. “I would love to have a computer at home, but I can’t afford to wait for the rebate and they are probably better in the schools.”

At the Labor campaign launch on Wednesday, Kevin Rudd said he wanted to turn every school into a “digital school”.

He ridiculed the Prime Minister, saying: “Mr Howard seems to believe that providing our young people with computers is exotic. Around the rest of the world, providing young people with computers is mainstream.”

Under Labor’s plan, every school would be connected to broadband, and be able to apply for capital grants of up to $1million to upgrade or buy new computers.