AIBU to be angry about primary school iPads without parent consultation?

[Doormouse79]

AIBU to be furious that our primary school trust pushed through iPads for Year 3/4 without engaging with parents?

Posting because I’m honestly so frustrated and I’d really appreciate some advice from other parents.
My child is at a Surrey school within Xavier Catholic Education Trust. The Trust has rolled out a 1:1 iPad scheme for Year 3 and Year 4 children: so we’re talking about 7, 8 and 9-year-olds, not teenagers.
The issue isn’t that I’m anti-technology. I’m really not. I understand schools use iPads and apps now. But this feels like a huge change to the way young children are being taught, and it seems to have been pushed through before parents were properly asked, informed or listened to. The Trust seems heavily involved with a Hong Kong-based/ international venture-capital backed company who appear to be developing their products based on our children's data. That's not necessarily suspect or wrong, but shouldn't we be entitled to explanations? Surely this cannot be right?
A large group of parents (around 40 across the three year groups) raised concerns. These weren’t just people moaning about screen time. Parents asked reasonable questions like:

1. Are iPads really needed every day for children this young?
2. What is the educational benefit?
3. How much screen time are they actually getting?
4. What happens to the children’s work and information once it’s uploaded?
5. Where is the children's data going and being stored in the world?
6. Who can see what they’re doing?
7. What checks were done before this was introduced?
8. Can parents opt out or have an alternative? (We have been told NO).

Instead of being properly engaged with, parents feel we’ve been fobbed off.
Requests for a proper meeting were declined. We’ve had generic reassurances and glossy-sounding explanations, but not clear answers to the actual questions being asked.
One of the things that really bothers me is that, as far as we’ve been told, there wasn’t a proper written risk assessment (a "Data Protection Impact Assessment") done before this was rolled out. Given this involves young children using iPads, school apps, online platforms, stored schoolwork and teacher monitoring, I find that hard to understand.
There is also apparently a system where teachers can monitor what pupils are doing on the iPads in real time. I’m not saying teachers shouldn’t supervise children — of course they should. But surely parents are entitled to know exactly how this works, what the limits are, and what safeguards are in place?
Another thing that feels uncomfortable is that staff from the Trust seem to have been involved in presenting alongside Goodnotes / EdTech projects connected with the sort of technology now being used in classrooms. Maybe that’s all perfectly above board, but if the Trust is that closely involved with promoting this kind of thing, shouldn’t they be extra careful to show parents that they’ve properly and independently checked whether it’s right for our children?
What’s also maddening is that this scheme was apparently still “in development” when introduced, and there didn’t seem to be solid evidence yet that it actually improves learning for children this young. Yet it has still been pushed ahead and expanded.
Parents haven’t been offered any meaningful alternative either. So in practice, it feels compulsory. You either go along with it or your child risks being the odd one out.
The tone from the Trust has really upset people too. Rather than treating parents as people with legitimate concerns about their children, the response has felt defensive and dismissive, almost as though we are being awkward for asking basic questions.
I just don’t think this is good enough.
This is about young children. It’s about how they learn, how much time they spend on screens, what happens to their schoolwork and personal information, and whether parents are being respected.
AIBU to think a school trust should not be rolling out something this significant without proper consultation, clear answers and proper checks first?
Has anyone else challenged an academy trust over something like this? Where would you go next — governors, the Trust board, the Diocese, ICO, Ofsted, MP?
I don’t want to be labelled “that parent”, but I also don’t think parents should be expected to just shut up and trust the system when the system won’t answer straightforward questions.
Would you escalate this formally? And where would you start?

IT has been very broadly used in all school settings for decades. Schools are going to go with the technology options that best suit their budget and storage. A laptop trolley takes up a lot less room than a computer room full of monitors!

Your kids doing research in lessons does not mean you have to buy them a tablet for at home.

Absolutely weirdly controlling, IMO.

I think they really owe you an explanation of how much they're using devices and for which subjects. In our school they do times tables (ttrs), maths homework and assessments on them (atom learning) but otherwise everything else is traditional. I really dislike even the homework being on an app/screen tbh, but i see the benefit when the maths systems mark the work for a teacher and provide reports for them - its more efficient for a teacher than hand marking sheets. I think if they're just doing simple things like times tables or maths that can be wrong or right, then that's fair enough, but if it's more complicated lessons then I think they don't really work, how are they asking questions or discussing things if they're all on individual pads. I also think at that age they're likely to get damaged/lost/broken, who is responsible for that, and they're so bad for concentration. I also think things like posture can be impacted if they're leaning over devices. All the current research shows they're not effective either, so it's not like they're going to be able to say the learning outcomes will improve. It's also a massive investment for a state school if every ks2 pupil is bought a pad, when that money could've been spent on other things.

I think I'd be contacting the governors to get some solid answers on what/how much they're getting used, how that decision has been made and what other options are open to parents. If you can't get that info or they're being used an excessive amount, I'd definitely move. It's a massive change and I suspect if you'd looked around a school where all the kids were on ipads, you'd not have chosen it.

I wish I could chat directly to you - I am also a parent in the trust and wonder which area your school is in!

Friend of mine went to view a local school for her youngest that our now Yr12 kids attended previously,they proudly showed off their Yr1 kids all sat using iPads, she turned around and left! Shame because otherwise it's a really good school.

Try 5 year olds. Our children's trust introduced them all the way through from reception onwards. My three kids can all barely write. Maybe they're all dyslexic. Who knows.

When my DD and her DH were looking at secondary schools for their DC they specifically discounted schools which were using ipads. Her DH works in tech and is definitely against it being used by children. Parents can talk with their feet!

This is a really tricky one and as I work in a school with iPads I’ll try and be fair. Huge reservations initially for obvious reasons others have stated - however:
For EAL children the iPad can translate ( we simply don’t have enough staff to do that)
Schools no longer have enough budgets to buy books to keep up with ever continually changing curriculum demands - so books can be photographed for comprehension and each child can have “ their own”
Children are ( some might say overly) familiar and comfortable with technology- so they are happier and more motivated to do spelling games, times tables etc on there
Work ( that has been WRITTEN in a book) can be photographed and sent home immediately, ditto homework, which saves the endless taking home and forgetting books / waiting for parents evening to catch up with what’s going on in the curriculum.
Children can have access to ( controlled) links ( eg kids geographic etc) which they can access at their own pace rather than only one screenshot on a board. This caters for different abilities/ different paces of learning.
There are many benefits to iPads , but I agree there are also disadvantages- it’s a very different system to 10 years ago.
However if it’s any consolation at all - the teacher’s iPad can also see what any child is doing on the tablet at any given moment; and the controls are 10x as strict as the strongest home controls ( other than a blanket non usage!)

No they don't. They learn tech every bloody minute of the day. It's like saying they need to learn video games.

In some ways I am all for tech in lessons, kids are way more engaged with tech and it gives a way more visual learning experience which does seem to knit into their memories more.

However, if anyone has seen the Hugh Grant clip I am anti bung them an iPad generation of learning. I am with you, just seems too casual when it is all the time.

Realistically it is very difficult to challenge an academy over this kind of thing. You should have a local board for your school but they are likely to have the role of implementing the decisions made by the academy chain board.

There should be a published complaints policy on the school website so check that and see what it says to do. Usual process is complain to Headteacher, then local governing body, then trust board, then DfE. You also need to be clear about whether you are complaining about Operational or Governance issues as they can be handled differently (I would think in this case it is a failure of governance).

My DC attend a school in this trust and this isn't a "thing" there- is it a school decision or a broader trust one?

@ProfessorTiddles Google indicates that IT decisions in that particular trust are made at individual school level.

Wait im confused... What's the difference with the computer sessions we had at schools, including primary schools, which was similar game-based learning, back in 90s?

My experience as a teacher is that as soon as the ipads are out learning ends and messing around begins. Weve lost the plot, childrne should be reading books and writing with a pen not staring at a screen. There no evidence that ipads improve learning its all nonsense.

😂😂😂

What do you think they’re doing with them?

Id be more pissed off that they are using ipads!

We're an android family, and dont like anything about sodding apple products

I'm not anti tech outright; I don't think using a maths app in combination with written work, oral mental maths etc is a bad thing. But the evidence is pretty clear that children do not learn better through screens. There is no research case that using screens primarily or exclusively gives better outcomes.

I'd also have serious concerns about ties between the EdTech company and the school (how were the systems they are using put out for tender? Is this value for money?) and as you say, what is happening to my DC data. Tbh, I would be looking to move my child.

There seems to be very little accountability in MATs to the parents, children and communities they serve. It's one reason I really tried to avoid MAT schools with my own, even though I've worked with some very good trusts.

We have chromebooks in our school, 1 per child. We use them in lots of lessons to supplement and enhance their learning, not as a replacement for pencils and exercise books!
As an example, in one English lesson the children were looking at writing dialogue then using inverted commas accurately. They had a document that built up dialogue in speech bubbles that each child contributed to. On my screen I could see in real time what each child was writing, and support their editing during the lesson. Children could see when they had made grammar or spelling errors instantly so knew what they needed to correct. By the end of the lesson, we had a bank of dialogue, correctly spelled and with appropriate grammar ready to use for the next lesson. I had no marking to do as all feedback was done effectively in the lesson.
In the next lesson, they had their bank of speech bubbles on their chromebooks. I modelled how to change these from speech bubbles into dialogue with the addition of reported clauses using correct punctuation.
Again, they wrote these on their Chromebooks, I was able to see their work live and support with editing, they could see where there were errors and hence self edit.
Once they had completed their sentences, they then copied these into their exercise books in order to practice their handwriting.
Without the Chromebooks, if this was all done in their books, I would have had to spend at least an hour marking books, children would have had to revisit their errors next lesson before moving on, having forgotten what they’d done the day before and good handwriting would have gone out of the window.

This sounds very similar to what was going on at OLA (Our Lady's Abingdon) and may have contributed to their insolvency and subsequent closure.

They seem a bit out of date to me.

I thought a lot of schools had gone down the IPad route and found it not fit for purpose.

Is this a serious question?

My experience was my primary school got 1 computer per year group in 2000. In 2002 they got 1 class set of mac books to share throughout the school. This increased to a second set in 2005. We maybe used them once per week for an hour. That works have been maximum use. We learned how to type, use search engines, and use Microsoft office. It does not compare to what I teach now.

My school’s computing curriculum teaches year 3s to login in to desktops, use the font and size function in MS word, and learn typing through games. In iPads it “teaches coding” through an app that is just a game they can mess about trial and error style. My school has a parade of such apps introduced from Nursery to boast about coding but the children would actually learn more from doing a jigsaw puzzle.

On top of that they have maths homework, grammar exercises, spelling activities, topic research, times table stars, ebook platforms schools buy into… my school is not a big one for screen usage. We are monitored by SLT with the aim of keeping it low, but even by Y3 they are using iPads daily, sometimes multiple times a day. I don’t think they learn well on them. They don’t retain and from the moment the iPads are out, I’m working 10x harder to keep their attention and deliver instructions. I don’t think of myself as a strict teacher but I have to be the complete with the blue light!

Your question is around parent consultation. It's not a private school so they have absolutely no need to consult with you.
However your points around use if iPads are valid and maybe presenting them with the Swedish research would be a starting point.

Not getting the outrage to be honest. When my kids were in primary we actually fundraised for iPads about 2015 I guess, they were on a trolley that recharged them and got wheeled around the various classrooms. All work done on it was educationally appropriate, they were locked to certain apps etc.

And then in secondary the schools local to me all have iPads or chromebooks, that are loaded with digital versions of the text books. They used Google classroom to communicate with teachers, Google slides etc for projects. It’s all managed by an educational software company so locked other than for school stuff.

They obviously write on paper as well but a lot of the work is electronic. Education doesn’t appear to have suffered in any way. only complaints from parents are the cost.

not in the UK so used for paying for school stuff in the state system.

See also Arthur Terry Learning Partnership. Seems to be a pattern with I-pad provision.

yes this.

have also actually seen IT literacy dive since moved to iPads from a set of 3 computers per classroom (send school)