The federal education minister, Jason Clare, has publicly supported the idea of a "digital detox" for school students, a stance that has prompted a national conversation about the role of technology in classrooms. The debate follows more than 15 years of laptops being integrated into Australian schools, with many teachers and parent groups now calling for a rethink of screen time in educational settings.
Earlier this month, Clare took to Facebook, writing: "When I was a kid there was a computer room at school. Now they are everywhere. From morning till night. I think there is a good argument our kids need a digital detox." Since that post, as he told ABC News Breakfast last week, he has been "inundated" with support from parents and teachers.
Clare's comments came after the Victorian government announced it will abolish bring your own device (BYOD) programs in primary schools and limit screen use to 90 minutes per day for years 3 to 6 from January next year. High schools have been instructed to enforce screen-free learning blocks for all students. The then premier, Jacinta Allen, launched the policy in July, saying, "Less time on devices means more time learning."
Expansion of computer use in schools
Computer use has expanded rapidly in schools in Australia and worldwide. "Computer rooms" like those in Clare's days have been replaced by a laptop in most high school students' backpacks, touted more than 15 years ago as the "toolbox of the 21st century" and essential to equipping students with the skills they would need for the future.
However, the latest Naplan results (described by some commentators in the media as a "national tragedy") have sparked a re-examination of the long-held concerns of some teachers, parents and experts about the implications of unstructured digital exposure in educational settings. Research linking screen usage to student performance is limited, nevertheless a change.org petition that calls for a rethink of device reliance in classrooms – and cites the recent Naplan results – has so far garnered more than 25,000 signatures.
This unease has yielded an increasing political appetite to consider changing policy and already prompted a few Australian schools to go back to pen and paper where technology offers no explicit educational benefit.
Global movement to limit screens
This reckoning isn't limited to Australia. Across the world many tech-forward school systems are wrestling with declining academic results and concerns about student wellbeing; the regional government in Madrid earlier this year announced a reduction of tech-time in primary school and Sweden is considering a reduced emphasis on technology in its 2028 curriculum. The US advocacy group Schools Beyond Screens has successfully campaigned for changes to policy in LAUSD, the country's second-largest school district. The change will see middle schoolers have just one hour of screen time per week, per subject, and high schoolers limited to 90 minutes per course over the week. Students there will no longer take home school devices unless parents opt-in. In the UK, advocacy group Closed Screens Open Minds, which has garnered celebrity support from the likes of Hugh Grant and Sophie Winkleman, says it's "building a comprehensive evidence-based resource for parents, teachers, and policymakers to challenge the adoption of EdTech in schools".
The idea of reducing ambient screen time in class is increasingly popular among parents and teachers, with many complaining of the lack of ability to monitor what a child is doing on a personal laptop as well as fearing for their ability to concentrate, think deeply and learn effectively while using devices connected to the internet.
Jane has been teaching in New South Wales schools for more than 30 years. She says since bringing personal devices into every class became the norm, her students' "capacity for human interaction is dissolving and their attention spans are shocking". Two decades ago, the performing arts and English teacher says students could be shown a video, read a text, or consider some artwork and discuss it for the duration of the lesson. "Now I have to change up my room and my delivery every 12 minutes to keep them engaged. Once upon a time when you studied something, you sat on it, you pondered, you discussed it, and they can't do that because their world is just flicking, flicking, flicking, flicking … They struggle to think critically or retain any information. And there's not one teacher that I talk to who doesn't feel the same."
Research and expert views
In response to the Swedish education ministry's proposal for a national digitisation strategy, the Karolinska Institute – one of the world's most prestigious medical research institutions – cited studies that show that when university students had their laptops open during lectures they spent up to 40% of the time "on irrelevant things that had no connection to the teaching". They extrapolated that for younger people, whose executive function is less developed, the effect may be even more significant.
However, while research has shown that writing by hand activates more neural networks than typing, reading from hard copies tends to produce better comprehension over screens and multitasking degrades working memory, confounding factors like socio-economic status and subject and teacher specific implementation make it incredibly difficult to quantitatively measure the impact of digital device use on students' learning writ large. What most experts and educators do seem to agree on is that the crux of the issue is not just screen time, but how and why devices are being used.
The origins of the rapid scale adoption of devices in Australian schools is the Digital Education Revolution. Launched by the Rudd government in 2008 it aimed to put a laptop in the hands of every Australian high schooler by 2011. "But we know that schools did not have the necessary structures or support around [the rollout]," says Prof Therese Keane, assistant dean of research and industry engagement at Latrobe University's faculty of education. Explicit digital instruction was scant, teachers were under qualified and "kids were using them by osmosis". "What ultimately happened was they were just using them to replace pen and paper." In 2013 the funding dried up. BYOD policies soon proliferated and these days the majority of Australian high school students have their own family-funded device for use throughout the school day.
Keane is a staunch proponent of the benefits technology can bring to education, she believes that 1:1 device access has significant potential, when it's done right. But between poor classroom management, gaps in the ICT curriculum, nebulous teaching aims related to the device usage and "parents' screen habits at home" she thinks that the average student is probably labouring through an implementation failure.
An international study from 2022 of the "learning time" of 15-year-old students pointed to a "new type of disciplinary problem – digital distractions", with one in three students on average across OECD countries reporting that in most or every mathematics lesson, they get distracted using digital devices. Around one in four students indicated that they get distracted by other students who are using digital devices. The same study highlighted that there is a place for digital learning, but that it depends on how devices are used.
Over the past 12 years Laura has worked short-term contacts at 10 schools, across two states, in the Catholic and state systems. She only allows students to open their laptops for specific tasks but, even then, she says, "as soon as those laptops are open, it's message the mate two rows behind you, or in another class, look up some online shopping, play a game".
While personally owned internet connected device use has become the default in most Australian high school classrooms, how and how often they are used is, in fact, the prerogative of the principal. In Queensland, NSW and Victoria principals are required to consult with the school community before setting device policies. It's a freedom Pasi Sahlberg, a professor in educational leadership at the University of Melbourne, believes isn't utilised well enough. Sahlberg believes that blanket bans such as Victoria's incoming guidelines reinforce the notion that education professionals cannot be trusted to determine what is best for their students. He would like to see more principals consult with their school's staff, families and especially students in order to arrive at bespoke policies that best serve their students.
Schools taking action
In regional Victoria, principal Justin Hird has done just that. This year he eliminated Castlemaine Secondary College's longstanding BYOD policy for year 7 students. After getting an "overwhelmingly positive" response from staff Hird took his proposal to the school community. He says 98% of all parents were in favour of replacing personal devices with school sets that are only used for specific learning outcomes at school, and not taken home. Hird says consultation with staff suggested removing personal devices from classrooms was a "no brainer." While in the minority, Castlemaine Secondary joins high schools such as Ashfield Boys High School and Waverley College in Sydney and Traralgon College in regional Victoria in purposefully and substantially limiting the amount of time their students spend on personal screens.
"[Teachers] were experiencing it first-hand in the classroom; the distractions, the students being unable to self-regulate," Hird says. "It was taking up a lot of time and energy and they felt they were losing quality teaching time because of this distraction. There is definitely a place for digital technologies, but it needs to be purposeful and really structured, using specific programs that are going to improve outcomes in particular areas." Hird says parents have reported that kids are spending less time on screens at home (compared to older siblings that have personal laptops) and at school he says staff have reported better social interactions among the cohort. Next year the policy will expand to years 8 and 9.
At private Sydney Grammar School, one of the country's oldest, elite educational institutions, there has never been a BYOD program. Headmaster Stuart McPherson says that while school-owned devices are occasionally used "there'll be no devices in the average classroom on an average day". Like his predecessor, Dr John Valant, McPherson is a firm believer that the foundation of education is human interaction. "Technology has lots of distractions. And that seemed pretty obvious from the beginning. But we don't want distraction, we want concentration." McPherson says that while he appreciates the opportunities technology has to offer in specific circumstances, he regularly reminds students that "knowledge matters and there's no substitute for it."
It's a conviction Jane says often falls on deaf ears in her own classrooms. She believes years of skimming websites, copying and pasting "and making PowerPoints" have left many students unable to analyse texts, or "really think for themselves at all." "So I have to go back and teach them how to read critically, and how to decipher and how to form opinions." Jane insists her students work from hard copies. "And at the end of it, I ask, do you prefer this to looking at a screen? Absolutely, they say."
