We must get investment in technology in schools right, so it ‘levels up’ education rather than leaving more children behind
During lockdown I received a knock on the door and was handed an Amazon parcel. I was startled to find a brand new £600 iPhone. My three-year-old, Clifford, burst into the room announcing, “hooray my iPhone is here Mummy!” – It turns out our little technical clever clogs had ordered the phone on my husband’s credit card on our Amazon app!
Not only that, but he had purchased it using voice recognition technology – something I hadn’t even got round to experimenting with yet. It was at this moment that I realised just how quickly the world was changing.
The demand for online learning is going to be so much greater for my son’s generation than it ever was for mine. And lockdown has only hastened the transformation from classroom and lecture theatre to the tablet and laptop. This is a good thing; I studied online at the Open University as a mature student, while fighting a seat to become an MP, working full-time and looking after my father, who was ill at the time. The experience was fulfilling but also practical and I couldn’t have studied if they didn’t offer such a flexible approach.
A manifesto pledge I would put forward would be for Britain to lead and embrace this technological online revolution in education – it is the only way we’ll ensure our education system delivers for the next generation. But as we embark on this exciting new adventure, and the opportunities it opens, we must accept that this brave new world has been leaving people behind.
I was elected back in December 2019 on a platform to “level up” opportunity throughout the country. I remember when the Prime Minister said that he believed that talent, skill and genius is distributed uniformly throughout the country and that the Conservative Party’s mission would be to ensure everyone had an opportunity to flourish, prosper, and to have access to equal opportunities and skills, regardless of background.
This was one of the main reasons my party made such huge strides in the “red wall” constituencies in the north. But the Covid school closures and the move to online learning have left some of the most vulnerable children, many in precisely these constituencies, far behind. That’s why we need to see significant and further targeted investment in technology and training in schools, new systems to train teachers in virtual teaching methods, to check children are engaging with online learning.
Technology and the online learning revolution have the capacity to future proof our economy, to open up a myriad of opportunities, to level up opportunity and ensure that Britain becomes a world leader in education, equipping Brits of every background to compete in the ever-changing global jobs market. But it can also be a huge barrier to social mobility.