Schools were seduced by screens. Now laptops are on the floor

In a classroom at Central Coast Steiner School, there is a blackboard with chalk and students write with pencils in their books. Until year 5, there’s not a screen in sight.

“We’re not Amish,” says principal Rosemary Michalowski.

But Michalowski and her teachers do have a fierce aversion to the way laptops, iPads and screens appear to have become commonplace in Australia’s classrooms.

“Schools generally have been seduced by the promise of technology and the marketing around how easy it will make the learning process,” Michalowski said.

It is almost two decades since Kevin Rudd’s digital education revolution sent thousands of laptops into high schools, and it has become commonplace for primary school parents to be asked to purchase expensive computers.

After a reckoning with the damages of smartphones and social media, certain schools are starting to pull back when it comes to device use to help attention and learning.

“What makes me pretty annoyed is that this disaster was foreseeable. All the impacts we’re seeing on attention and wellbeing is common sense,” Michalowski said.

Her school is among the top academic performers when it comes to NAPLAN growth between years 3 and 5. On top of better concentration, she says her students also benefit from the enhanced memory retention that the strong focus on handwriting brings.

“We do have students who come from other schools … most students who come, they might have to work on their handwriting,” she said. “It does help embed memory more deeply.”

In the past couple of years, a “de-screening” of sorts appears to have begun in some NSW schools. It comes after Madrid’s government last year capped laptop and tablet use in classrooms to two hours per week with no homework to be conducted on screens.

Change is also afoot in Victoria, where the government will cap screen time in primary schools at 90 minutes per day.

NSW Education Minister Prue Car acknowledged the growing concern about the amount of time spent on screens.

“While much screen use occurs outside school hours, schools have a role to play, and we want to ensure schools’ use of technology strikes the right balance and is age appropriate,” she said.

Car said the NSW government had also commissioned its own research to better understand the impacts of screens and screen addiction.

At The Illawarra Grammar School, which is phasing in the explicit instruction method of learning, they have also decided to move away from ubiquitous laptop usage.

“We are, therefore, minimising the use of technology in the classroom, primarily because it can be so distracting in the classroom,” principal Dr Julie Greenhalgh said.

“Consequently, students in years 7-12 now place their laptops under their chairs when they come into the classroom, only pulling out the laptops for brief, specific usage.”

She said research had shown there was research pointing to how handwriting helped bolster student understanding. “In other words, less technology has lots of benefits,” she said.

The principal of Norwest Christian College last year introduced guidelines for use of iPads in primary school last year.

Device use is capped at between two and three hours per week for kindergarten to year 2 students, while for the rest of primary, it is a maximum of one hour per day.

“Too much screen time and social media can hurt mental health and reduce the ability to concentrate, which makes learning more difficult,” its guidelines state.

St Andrew’s Cathedral School has lowered its usage of technology in the classroom. Workbooks are used across every subject and handwriting is the focus in class time.

Rhonda Robson, the school’s head of primary education, no longer sends students homework to complete on devices.

“We reviewed how teachers were utilising technology and listened carefully to parental feedback requesting reduced homework-based device usage, where it existed in the upper primary years,” she said.

Despite some science pointing to the benefits of pen and paper, NAPLAN tests for year 5 and up are conducted online while the NSW Education Standards Authority has put more HSC exams online in recent years.

Dr Julie McGonigle, head of St Andrew’s, noted the complexity of moving from low tech to no tech in the senior years was that exam boards for both the HSC and International Baccalaureate were moving towards fully digital examinations, which was an “unhelpful contradiction”.

“This move seems to be motivated by an improvement in their own efficiencies rather than the research about what accelerates learning,” she said.

“Regardless, St Andrew’s Cathedral School is committed to ensuring that technology is used in its place, as the servant and not the master of learning – as a tool and not a replacement for the teacher.”

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