Rise of online homework is doing harm to our children

Jennifer Powers argues that Britain needs to follow the lead of Sweden and Spain and prioritise analogue learning

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Just as I sat down to write this piece, I received an email from my son’s school informing me that he, my husband and I have all been given accounts to a “personalised, quiz-based learning programme” with an “Al-powered tutor” to help students if they’re stuck. Gone are the days when children used to be issued with a textbook and the first days of terms would be spent covering them with bits of old wallpaper to preserve them.

Today, children are issued with passwords, digital logins, dashboards and any number of online resources to help them with their school work and learning. Nearly all of my 12-year-old son’s homework must now be completed online.

No one, quite literally, signed up for this. I would love an alternative, and it turns out I am not alone.

The relentless march to digitise education is frustrating parents and harming children. We have all heard of the campaign to make schools smartphone-free. More than 350,000 parents in the UK support the Smartphone Free Childhood movement to delay smartphones and social media until children are past puberty.

It is a no-brainer, resulting in better behaviour, improved attendance, higher educational attainment, and happier children. A “smartphone-free schools rating” has even been designed by headteachers to help schools become genuinely smartphone-free.

So, how ironic is it that while on one hand, schools are alert to the dangers of too much screen time, often lecturing parents and pupils, all this good work is being undermined by the pervasive use of screens in and out of the classroom.

Children as young as five are being set online homework. It is now routine for children to be issued a tablet when they start secondary school. In some places, this happens in year 5 or 6 in a well-meaning but misguided attempt to “get children ready for secondary school”.