To be sick of school directly undermining me

Oh I hate this @LainaDelBoy and feel for you. I work in tech but try and reduce screentime for my child as much as poss. My son is 3 and I'm thinking about looking about the screen time side of things for his primary school options as I'd rather as little screen time as possible. Don't have suggestions for you but just my sympathies.

Yes it's bullshit
My school trust also dishes them out. Can't help thinking it's just really lazy teaching. All of kids have them and their handwriting is terrible. They use these stupid drawing pens to do some really uncreative scribbling on the iPad and that seems to be it. I thought you did have to agree though, I had to sign something.

This for sure.

I am going to guess Scotland. Join unplug Scotland. It’s a HUGE concern

Dd is 5 in year 1 and I just asked her if she has used an iPad or tablet at school and she said “noooo!” Like it was a ridiculous idea. I wouldn’t expect tablet use as routine at that age and throughout primary would expect that they didn’t have excessive use of them. I know they watch occasional videos. I thibk I’d just ask the teacher about it (in an “I’m just interested…” way rather than accusing) to see how much they actually use them.

It does sound like a lot of screen time doesnt it

I wouldn't like this at all! Have you talked to her teacher about your concerns? Just make an appointment, say you'd like to understand what they're using and how much, and for what benefit. It might not be as bad as you think. See what they say and if not happy take it from there.

There is a school near us that is heavy on technology and uses it for everything. Even to the extent that the older kids actually do their work on iPads and it gets uploaded for the teacher to mark - no actual writing involved. It seems very similar to the school you are describing. I didn’t put it as a choice for my son for that reason. They were very proud of the fact they were using all the state of the art technology but it just seemed like a red flag to me. I want my children to learn by doing, not by looking at a screen.

His school doesn’t use laptops until year 3, however I did complain last year when he was in reception and found out the PE lessons consisted of watching a Danny Go or yoga episode. I wouldn’t mind the odd one is the weather is horrendous but not every week. They also don’t alot of time watching Andy’s adventures on iplayer. Schools do seem to use a lot of technology nowadays and I do think the use of YouTube in particular is an issue but it also depends on the teacher. I think his reception teacher just couldn’t be bothered to do anything that made their life a bit more difficult. My son’s Year 1 teacher is fantastic, she does use technology but in a balanced way. He’s been telling me about all the fun things he has been doing which is a direct contrast to last year when all I heard was ‘we watched numberblocks’ or ‘we did Danny go’

I don't think this is normal al all! In my daughter's school they use ipads for some stuff but it is minimal and there are no ipads being used for most of the day, and definitely don't use it for youtube or anything with friends features!

I would also be very unhappy about this.

This is bleak.

what’s your local council?

seems like deeply lazy and poor teaching to me. I’d be really really cross. I think as adults we forget the tactile skills we miss by doing EVERYTHING on a smart phone or tablet. Even turning pages of a book.

Not normal here.
We were watch YouTube for topic related clips, movement breaks and sometimes PE (yoga). We also sometimes use a relevant numberblocks.
We barely have enough working devices to use for computing lessons let alone for each class to have their own set! Computing usually begins in year 2, but more often year 3.

OK, I'm old. Make that old fashioned. But do they actually have qualified teachers or just someone to help them log on? What a depressing world we live in when we spend hours looking at screens. Time for to switch off and read a book.

You may be interested to know that my friend who is a Dutch primary school teacher said this was all the rage about 7 years ago there. Throw out the books and bring in the iPads. Over about 5 years standards dropped dramatically and now they’ve been abandoned and it’s back to pen and paper and real books. Everyone agreed it was a failed experiment.

But the primary schools I know near me (south east) don’t do this and I’ve never heard my grandchildren mention an iPad. So you’re unusual I think.

I agree with you OP it's ridiculous . My nephew was due to go back to school on Monday but because the internet was off couldn't until Tuesday ! This after being off for six weeks . What's wrong with putting an actual book in front of them or a pencil and paper

Not typical at all and I’d be pissed off

It's no wonder kids can't read and write properly any more.

Reading a book on an ipad is NOTHING like reading a real book and they need to learn to use a pencil/pen.

Sounds like lazy teaching.

Also I am sorry to say I think it’s a bit odd that you’re considering complaining to school about a bit of iPad use, which most likely has a degree of educational content, whilst gaming a lot at home. Surely the first thing is to stop or dramatically reduce screen time at home rather than anything else?

No I think it sounds crap and lazy. There's a time and a place for screens. I think using them for everything is completely unnecessary

Were people paying for this?

Not that is matters, it's dreadful.

Yes. At first I assumed that you just want to read actual books and are anti-tech for kids, so was going to say that no state school I'd heard of would suit, so consider homeschooling, but then you say you game a lot, OP
Maybe join the library and go to book only events/bring paper books to use at home instead. It's free and you can get lots of books and reading trails etc.

Scotland has a digital learning platform called Glow. Every pupil and teacher is given a Glow email address so pupils have the ability to contact any other pupil and teacher in the country as well as use it like a regular email address.

That’s BS. The schools are steam rolled with technology they don’t need, they don’t know how to use. It’s proven that kids learn better through actually handwriting and reading real books. People are very very naive to think iPads in schools with young kids are okay. It is absolutely not okay and parents should be worried and push back.

at the end of the day, huge tech companies are winning contracts with the school. This is not about education - it’s about money

I don’t think this is normal. I had a reception aged child in Covid and I hated the e-book platform so much I just bought my own reading scheme books and cracked on.

At my children’s primary, they used the white board a lot in reception but no iPads. They did specific ICT lessons on laptops from year 1. My eldest moved to a prep and got an iPad for year 5. It has been helpful and a useful educational tool but I wouldn’t have wanted her to have it any younger. The first few weeks there was some nonsense as they were getting used to the tech. 5 year olds shouldn’t be on then.

my year 3 child has never used an iPad in school. I would be very concerned personally if he was on one as much as your daughter is.

I’ve voted YABU because you haven’t seemingly asked the school about this yet, just taken the word of your DC.

I think there is a real balance here- totally agree on the need for paper-based leaning but for some subjects, things online are so useful. And I couldn’t get worked up about a bit of music. I think provided the school is using their discretion and has sensible policies in place I would not get involved.

That said if you specifically don’t want your child working on iPads etc I think there’s nothing stopping you raising with them, but they might make the point that your child might not be able to access the whole curriculum. For example if the class is doing an online tour of a museum how would your child access that? And I don’t think schools can deal with this on a piecemeal basis (museum tour fine, 5 mins of Hey Duggee not fine) as this would be an administrative nightmare with 30 kids in a class.

Also remember that for lots of middle class parents, the issue is too much screen time, but for others using iPads at school
might be the only chance they get to use them, which seems to me to be quite important. If a child were to start secondary without a basic level of computer literacy that would be a disaster, and widen the gap for less privileged children.

My kids aren’t allowed YouTube. When the oldest started school and they put YouTube on, she sat there with her hands covering her eyes 😆 the teacher obviously asked what was wrong and she said she’s not allowed to watch YouTube….

It’s a nightmare OP. The school my kids go to have to do all of their homework electronically even from reception 😢 I would have moved them, but they are with lots of friends and seem to be doing quite well all things considered.

In answer to your question they do have loads of apps for various things. They had one that imitated social media (like Facebook) but ended up switching off the chat function when they were inundated with complaints. In my experience the only way to force change is to get loads and loads of parents behind you and all challenge them together.