Schools have ‘gone crazy’ with technology

Campaigner says classes should be ‘safe haven’ from screens and funding must be spent on teachers

SCHOOLS have “gone crazy” filling classrooms with screens and results will go down as a result, the actress Sophie Winkleman has warned. The campaigner, 43, wants to see iPads removed from classrooms and the hundreds of millions of pounds spent by UK schools every year on education technology invested in teachers instead.

In an exclusive interview with

she said that schools should be a “safe haven” from screens for children. Research from the technology regulator Ofcom this week showed that a quarter of children under seven have their own smartphone, while 32 per cent of children aged eight to 17 had experienced something “nasty or hurtful” online in the past year.

Winkleman, who is married to Lord Frederick Windsor, second cousin to the King, has spent four years researching the impact of screens on children and is alarmed by what she has seen on school visits in her role as patron of the charity School-Home Support. “I’m very concerned about tech for tech’s sake,” she said. “It’s especially rampant in independent schools, where many heads have gone crazy for filling the classroom with screens.

“Maybe it is, but it’s their job to educate parents on the superior nature of books, handwriting and deep thinking.”

UK schools spend around £900 million a year on education technology, according to the Department for Business and Trade. At prestigious private schools like Eton College, pupils can be found learning from digital textbooks and quizzing apps, while using digital notebooks and Apple pencils to draw or write on a screen.

Meanwhile, tablets are available for pupils to use in the majority of state schools in England, according to a government survey.

The “digitisation” of education in schools is gaining pace, with the use of computers in exams becoming increasingly more widespread. So-called

“edtech” products are “simply not proven yet”, Winkleman said. “Results and progress have been descending since they’ve been in use. I believe that’s why exams are now going online, because schools can’t bear to say, ‘ok, this hasn’t worked’. So advisors are lowering the rigour expected in exams to match falling levels.”

A Unesco report on technology in education last year found there was “little robust evidence on digital technology’s added value to education”. In the UK, 7 per cent of education technology companies had conducted randomised controlled trials, while only 12 per cent had used third-party certification.

Winkleman cited research by Prof John Jerrim of University College London who found that pupils tend to do worse in reading, maths and science assessments when they are completed on a computer, compared to on paper.

Other academics have found that when people read on a screen they tend to skim and scan more than when reading from a book.

Winkleman has two daughters – Maud, 10 and Isabella, 8 – who she has moved to different schools twice to get them away from iPads in classrooms.

The actress is a leading voice in a growing movement against children’s access to the social media apps found on smartphones and tablets. Since February, tens of thousands of parents have joined a grassroots movement, Parents for a Smartphone-free Childhood, launched to help parents support each other in delaying giving their children smartphones.

She added: “I think teachers need to be helped and supported and paid more, and I am angry that so much money has been spent on the wrong tools, instead of the only tools we need in the classroom which is a great teacher.”

The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.