Every so often, a piece of technology emerges with the power to transform the school system – or so it seems for the first couple of weeks of term. By the end of the year, the magical kit will probably be gathering dust in the corner of the classroom next to the lost property. Interactive whiteboards are a prime example of this. Ushered in with great reverence about 15 years ago, they have since been used as very expensive chalkboards, which – unlike their dusty predecessors – occasionally crash and erase all the teacher’s writing.
The rise of technology in schools has been predicted for more than a decade. In 2011, the Financial Times declared that schools must embrace “digital revolution”. A similar article appeared two years later, arguing that “changes in schools, colleges and universities are likely to prove as disruptive as those in media and finance”. But the pandemic largely showed the extreme difficulty in keeping students engaged through a screen, and exposed how inequality can grow when pupils have to rely on expensive technology (and the internet).
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