How we think about technology in schools

Should every pupil have their own device?

Not necessarily, and that question is where most schools go wrong. There isn’t one right answer. There are four types of learner, and a good technology strategy plans for all of them.

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IT engineer working inside a network cabinet in a school classroom

The four types of learner

Every pupil falls into one of four types, and so does every teacher. Design for one and you’ve designed for a quarter of the school.

Walk into a classroom where this works and you’ll see all four at once. Six children on iPads, five on Chromebooks, some writing next to a screen, some with nothing. They’ve been given the choice, and that’s the whole point.

01

The room

Prefers going somewhere specific to do a specific job. An IT suite still has a place, whatever the trend says.

02

Their own

Wants a device that belongs to them, set up how they like it.

03

Shared

Learns better working alongside someone else, one device between two, both contributing.

04

Whatever fits

Picks the right tool for the task in front of them. Tablet for one thing, laptop for another, sometimes nothing at all.

What a digital strategy actually needs

School staff talking together in a classroom

Staff voice

What teaching actually looks like in your school, from the people doing it.

Pupils in a school hall watching a presentation about building resilience

Pupil voice

How the children learn, which is easy to assume and rarely asked.

Woman using a large touchscreen showing research on digital pedagogy

Academic input

What the research says about how technology changes teaching, rather than what’s fashionable.

Two teachers looking at a tablet together in a classroom

Technology input

What’s genuinely possible, what it costs, and what’s not worth the money. That’s us.

It only matters if it changes learning

A strategy that doesn’t alter how a pupil learns is just a document. We measure success by the change in the classroom.

The purpose of a school isn’t just knowledge, it’s passing values to the next generation, and that only happens when children learn to teach themselves. Technology that doesn’t change what happens inside a learner’s head is a fad, whatever it’s called this year. That was true of YouTube and it’s true of AI.