> They should ban that too. Technology MUST be fit for purpose in a classroom and most of it isn't.

Absolutely agree.

It’s just bad luck that your kid is in a school that can’t get it right.

My 16yo kid’s (state) school is far from perfect but the school provided laptop works well, is reasonably locked down and policed, and is fixed or swapped out quickly if there is a problem. Sure we have to contribute towards it but we can (and we pay extra to help cover the cost for someone who isn’t able to pay for it). There are no similar tales of broken WiFi, unavailable servers or whatnot.

They went through some problems where there were multiple systems in use and the kids regularly got confused about where they had to check for homework, with different teachers for the same subject using different systems, but that was resolved eventually.

Phones are officially banned but enforcement is sometimes sporadic. If they do take the piss with it then it gets confiscated and a parent has to come in to get it released (the school has some generic Nokias to hand out at the end of the day if the kid has to have some way of being in contact). That deals with the majority of it.

They seem to have got the balance mostly right in terms of doing enough to keep the lessons mostly distraction free, and also reducing access to keep FOMO down (if hardly anyone has access to their phone during the school day then they, as a group, don’t think they are missing out on much).

Not a fan of them going back to paper for everything, but 100% on screens isn’t good either, especially as the exams are pretty much all paper based.