14 October 2026 - 10:00am
When it comes to digital learning, the UK is not so much riding the bandwagon as leading it — even as more and more countries flee in the opposite direction. In Norway and Sweden, policies promoting the use of iPads and laptops have been reversed in favour of books and handwriting after both countries recorded drops in reading scores. The regional government of Madrid is banning device-based homework in primary schools and limiting tablet use to two hours a week. Even in California, home of the US tech industry, elementary and middle-school students in Los Angeles will now face restrictions on device use.
The UK, however, continues to spend an estimated £900 million a year on education technology, while remaining Europe’s largest EdTech market, with almost one million children now using device-learning tools in every lesson at school, and a further 2.6 million pupils using screens every day as part of the curriculum.
Now, 150 leading clinicians have signed a letter to Education Secretary Lucy Powell, warning of the consequences of this excessive screen use: “a generation is being taught on devices and platforms that have never been subject to systematic, child-focused testing for their cumulative impact on children’s eyes, ears or speech.”
These clinicians are right to worry about the normalisation of teaching children via computer games, whizzy apps, tech portals and emojis. Many of these “learning platforms” contain the same gamification elements that make social media so addictive — “streaks”, countdown clocks, leaderboards, coins for correct answers (Times Tables Rock Stars, for example, has avatars that users can dress up) — and yet there is little evidence they improve teaching and learning. Jared Horvath, a neuroscientist and author of The Digital Delusion, has reviewed meta-analyses covering tens of thousands of studies. His verdict: “In nearly every context, EdTech doesn’t come close to the minimum threshold for meaningful learning impact.”
There is the obvious hypocrisy of asking parents to enforce healthy boundaries around screen time while the very institutions educating our children encourage device use. Yet there is also a dangerous “attention inequality” of which we need to be wary: many top independent schools have rolled back their digital strategies and reaped benefits as a result. Winchester College, for example, has returned to pen and paper for almost all homework and classwork. Meanwhile, boarding schools such as Gordonstoun and Eton have introduced strict policies on device use, from banning new pupils from having smartphones to requiring all pupils to hand in their phones at night. Both behaviour and results have reportedly improved.
The state sector, on the other hand, seems destined to continue its digital dependence, with over three-quarters of schools continuing to use digital learning tools on a regular basis. Labour is continuing to press ahead with plans to create AI tutors for the most disadvantaged schools (despite little evidence for their efficacy), while many academy trusts continue to give out personalised devices to students and staff, even though studies show they are nothing more than a costly distraction. We know that screen time is becoming a new class signifier: children from lower-income families already spend twice as much time a day on screens as more advantaged children, and this disparity is now being compounded both in and out of school.
If these trends continue, we may end up with a social divide between mass, app-based instruction for the many, and human dialogue and intellectual exchange for the few. Despite all its promises to “democratise” learning, EdTech may actually entrench educational inequality further. Britain’s children are having their attention spans decimated by an education delivered in 10-second bursts of bite-sized graphics, while the benefits of concentration, connection and creativity that come with a more analogue education are reserved for a privileged few. A genuinely progressive education policy would give every child the chance to learn how to concentrate, not reserve that privilege for those whose parents can afford to keep them offline.
