To be sick of school directly undermining me

[LainaDelBoy]

I’m at my wits end and really need some external perspective from people outside my local school/council area. (I moved to another part of the UK to raise my children, so this is not the school system I went through myself and isn't an area where there's much school choice - if you're not happy, you pay to go private it seems).

Since starting school at five, DD has routinely used a school-issued iPad (no one told me this would happen). I gradually discovered, mainly through what she told me rather than information from the school, that she had been signed up to all sorts of platforms and apps without me knowing/us being asked to approve.

It seems she has watched YouTube during lessons (I've regularly heard they've done PE on YouTube/"music" I've learned is often a sing along Disney song with the words at the bottom? etc) and come home talking about things seen in adverts. Some of the apps have coins, rewards and "friend" features which was a lovely (!!) sudden introduction to class bullying to deal with. and she's been using AI tools on the thing, but school haven't ever told me what it is/why/and I still don’t know what that tool was.

This week, another mum has just confirmed that the school ipads DO also all have email addresses through which they could message one another (although kids like mine age 5 aren't told the passwords for a couple of years yet - thankfully apaprently).

and tonight she's just come home talking about reading a book at school, only for a few questions later for it to bcome clear that it's not a BOOK book, it's another bloody ebook they scroll through on the ipad.

Stepping back a bit: I feel as though the school and council have taken away my ability to manage how much screen time my DD gets, while telling me I have "no legal right to opt out" of so much screentime at school when I asked about toning it down last year (I didn't ask for specifics, I just asked about the messaging stuff, and how much time they were on the iPad for typically).

We game a lot as a family (consoles/etc so i'm not anti-screens generally), but i just feel like there's a constant barrage of poorly done apps, videos and AI without clear limits or safeguards in her classrom. I don't know if it's like this in all schools.

In the UK, would you consider this "normal" or acceptable? Have other parents successfully asked for reduced digital screen learning/alternatives? AIBU to keep challenging it (the council are quite adament that their policy has zero flex)?

I don't know where to go from here and i don't want to be "that parent" but there are so many red flags here but i don't know if to keep pushing on it?

As I said above, in our school PE is lesson planned by senior leaders, I don't have the flexibility to deviate from it. It's not uncommon in some schools (particularly chains) for that to be the case for certain topics.

Mine had an iPad from January in P1 but mostly maths games. Homework has always been reading (actual book) and spelling with sentences with the word in the sentence in an actual homework book.

Hi OP, I came across this press release this morning which may help with your research: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/203/education-committee/news/217822/social-media-ban-committee-publishes-government-response-to-report-on-childrens-screentime/ (from this week so very new)

So to be clear… it’s not the curriculum
it is a crappy school

Yep, same in Borders. Huge amounts of resources (millions and millions of pounds) leeched by big tech whilst schools
cant buy the basics and learning support staff are cut, small rural nurseries are being mothballed etc etc. It’s a scandal.

I’ve never personally come across this. My older DC attended two different primaries because we moved towns and now my younger DC go to a different one so have experience of 3 schools. They have a limited number of iPads / laptops which they bring out once in a while for IT lessons but that’s it. Pen and paper and actual books are used. In reception they put Numberblocks or alphablocks on as a treat sometimes.

I am with you OP. DD's are in year 3 and 6,and they have 1 lesson of screen time a fortnight, which is a specific IT lesson with laptop where they do typing, drawing, basic programming 'beebots'. The school did trial sending home ebook links for a year after books kept going missing, but decided after a year that was slowing progress, so reverted to paper books with a £5 fine if lose them - miraculously only 4 books were lost after they brought this in, vs dozens before.

If it's wet PE, they might do something like 'cosmic yoga' projected onto a big screen in the hall, and a movie on last day of term, but as far as I know, that's it for screen time.

The OP is describing a rather different experience though - her daughter is watching YouTube with adverts in the classroom. Many other parents are describing over use of videos instead of PE, story time etc.

The mass provision of ipads and “gamification” of learning in Scotland has not correlated with educational improvements, quite the opposite. There is next to no research showing genuine educational benefit to children, especially disadvantaged children of over use of technology at an early age. Its always the disadvantaged children who suffer worst in these experiments - MC parents either go private or make sure the children get plenty of traditional learning practice at home.

A number of decades ago a large publishing company made a fortune flogging the “Look and Say” reading method and making it the default in US schools with some very dodgy research behind it. A generation of children suffered badly in reading acquisition, especially disadvantaged chilcdren. Publishing companies were flogging “gamified” learning apps to schools 10-15 years ago - again with no real research behind them but a lot of money to be made and large marketing budgets.

Pretty much every country conducting large scale experiments on this are has stepped back and reduced tech in schools for early years - not just because the very expensive kit and app licences don’t improve outcomes but because outcomes worsened. Disadvantaged children doing worst of all - just as with the old Look and Say failures.

There is a place for technology in schools but it should only be where there is solid, independent evidence to support it rather than marketing from publishing firms.

This is obviously the way school manage the lack of resources and teachers these days- and this shows up in a huge surge in homeschooling (which is still all internet based though-so I'm told.

No necessarily - my daughters attend a state primary, and from years 3 to 6, a specialist teacher comes in 2 days a week to do music lessons for all the classes. Every child gets an instrument and they put on a little concert each term led by the music teacher - they do a different instrument each term. This has included African drumming, guitars, violins, keyboards, trumpets, singing, steel pans.

They also have specialist PE teachers come in to take all the PE lessons from years 3-6, and a dedicated forest school lead. The time the children are in music,PE and forest scho then makes the 3-4 hours PPA time for each class teacher, rather than employing cover.

I suspect it was the content of his search history that got him sacked, not just showing it! I doubt I'd be sacked for my history of yoga and revision videos 😃

Yes, and what this poster is describing is very common across English state schools. It used to be called Wider Opportunities, can't remember the name now, but it's run by county music hubs and is open to all schools in the area. It's hardly the case all state school pupils never touch an instrument. Children I've taught have learnt violin, ukulele, drums. If they show promise, there is a pathway for small group lessons etc.

You’d love our school- the HT is very selective about technology and campaigns about low screen childhoods. It’s a private school but it seems to be a growing trend.

What you described sounds excessive and I’m reasonably lax about screen time.

That certainly isnt universal. My children have never been set a single piece ofo line homework at either primary or secondary school

I don't t think your 5 or 6 year old is a reliable source of information as to how long they are spending on screens each day.

I have absolutely seen this at various schools I’ve worked at as a teacher. My previous school was a private international school, and their primary years programme had a BYOD policy from grade one.
Between daily Reading Eggs, activities on SeeSaw, lazy teaching in PE which seemed to be exclusively YouTube videos, music lessons involving lyric videos, language lessons with 20min kaboom games in a 45-min lesson, ‘inquiry tasks’ which seemed to consist of watching endless videos… the screen time was ridiculous.
My own DS did one year at the school and ended up completely addicted to the iPad. We got rid of it as soon as we unenrolled him, and are so pleased that there is no screen in sight at his new school.

While I don’t do it myself, I sympathise with teachers who overuse screens. Behaviour is so awful and it’s the only guaranteed way to keep students quiet and engaged in something. It’s pushed endlessly by SLT. Paperwork and admin is so overwhelming that I’ve walked past multiple lessons with students on screens while the teachers frantically do admin on their laptops.

Its so sad and definitely not what teaching is supposed to be about.

They have very very little concept of time

The Op has got herself in to a state on the basis of her 5 year old’s version of screen use at school

My son has just started secondary and is completely overwhelmed by the amount of apps and websites and logins.

and honestly, so am I! Email after email with apps for monitoring homework and lunches and paying for clubs and so on.

There’s a “scheme” in place in our school. Parents are supposed to sign up to pay £xx per month and then at the end of their time in primary school they pay £xxx that’s left to keep it or the school keeps it. I refused to pay for tech that is outdated. My older son in secondary now was given an iPad that the support was dropped for in 2022. His best friends mum paid for her son to keep his iPad, Apple no longer support that model, so it’s a very expensive paperweight at this point as it no longer can download the operating systems required. It’s a system whereby the school gets a “kickback” of £XX every time someone purchases the iPad to keep.
The school also no longer needs HLTAs in every class and just has 1 TA covering a whole year group.

The council are funding the iPads to be clear, it's from the budget. it's not the actual school buying them, and parents don't have to pay for them.

i've had a chat with another mum who had asked a lotof questions around this last year and apparently they are spending a chunk of every day on the ipads. they've disabled the screen time settings on the ipads so you can't find out how long children have been using them, but you can't seem to enable it to start tracking it. (to be clear, i'm not allowed to bring the ipad home that my DD is using, it's only permitted in a couple of years once they get their email password and are expected to also do homework on the ipad at home).

I've got another couple of parents to check for me. none of them hav the digital wellbeing thing enabled.

so you can't see how long the screen time usage is unfortunately like you would a normal ipad you'd bought.

i am speaking to more parents who can tell me more about what they're using them for - so far i've been able to hear it's PE, music, books, and some gaming stuff that i haven't been able to fully understand yet, which i have no idea why they're on the ipads never mind able to access them. i will hopefully get a clearer idea then.

Yes - to the posters guessing we moved to scotland - i never went to school here so this problem is new to me - i should have possibly asked more questions but you never think you're going to have to fight a screentime battle at age 5 and 6 with school, i thought this was a battle with early teens probably!

the school doesn't have proper computers for the kids to use (nothing with a keyboard and monitor or anything, which i can understand if you're learning about computers as the subject). it's all ipads for learning on, but it isn't for computer learning (i'm not even sure if they learn that at primary school level around here, sorry!)

It absolutely was! Silly sod had googled something pretty unambiguous about “teens” the dirty bar steward. I’m even be careful of your yoga tbh. Keep everything separate. I got a reconditioned laptop for about £150 and keep personal and work very separate.

@LainaDelBoy it is to save on the photocopying text book bill. It’s a pain in the arse. Teaching kids to annotate a pdf electronically wasn’t conducive to engaging with the actual text. Nightmare.

@LainaDelBoy are you saying some parents can monitor usage and some can’t? I would be:am concerned. I’m not Luddite but I think they are being used Willy nilly and they are increasing screen time hugely. We’re rural with long bus journeys and they aren’t using them for “private study” on the buses !!