Schools have embraced apps and remote classes in the past year. Some see benefits in virtual learning, but others fear the impact on disadvantaged children and privatisation by stealth
CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on The Guardian
History is likely to record that Britain’s teachers were better prepared for COVID-19 than government ministers. With cases rising in Europe, 14 schools in England had already closed their gates by the end of February 2020. When senior staff at Barham Primary Cchool began drawing up contingency plans, on 26 February, they realised they needed to up their use of digital technology.
They decided to upload work daily to ClassDojo – a popular app they were already using to communicate with parents. The problem was that some parents, many of whom do not speak English as a first language, didn’t have the app. When, three weeks later, it was announced that UK schools would close to most pupils – with just two days’ notice – Barham’s staff, especially the Gujarati, Tamil and Hindi speakers, took to the playground, digital devices in hand, to help parents get connected.
“We decided ClassDojo was a non-negotiable,” says Laura Alexander, a senior leader at the school and nursery attended by 930 children aged three-to-11 in Wembley, London. “Every single parent had to be on there so we could communicate with them and get work to the children.” Ensuring they could distribute work remotely was just the first of many challenges staff at Barham faced as they turned towards greater reliance on edtech, in response to COVID-19.
They were, of course, far from alone. By April the pandemic had forced almost 1.6bn children and students out of their schools and universities worldwide, putting many of their teachers on a steep edtech learning curve. And now, with UK schools having closed to the majority of pupils again on 5 January, teachers are back to providing mostly remote lessons.
For some, the resulting global edtech boom is long overdue. Andreas Schleicher, head of education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has described the pandemic as creating ‘a great moment’ for learning. In May, New York governor Andrew Cuomo publicly questioned why physical classrooms still exist at all, as he announced that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates would help rethink education in the state.
Digital divide
Sceptics, however, warn that a ‘digital divide’ further widens existing attainment gaps and inequalities faced by disadvantaged children. Others say schools are ill-equipped to protect their pupils’ data, and that the growing role of commercial interests – both within state education and through a booming direct-to-consumer edtech market – amounts to privatisation by stealth.
At the end of March, with such short notice of the shutdown, most UK schools turned to their existing digital tools to help their pupils continue learning. For some this meant simply uploading links to worksheets on school websites, while others gave live lessons via video conferencing. It didn’t take long for problems to emerge.
“We were putting work on ClassDojo, but the children couldn’t send me back the work, so they weren’t getting the feedback they need,” says Laura, who was teaching year four pupils at Barham last spring. In the summer the school began transitioning to Google Classroom, as a more interactive remote learning tool, and set up face-to-face lessons via Google Meet for those unable to return or self-isolating.
Big tech on the move
Pre-COVID, Google had already gained a dominant position in many schools by providing its edtech tools free, or at low cost. In the first month of the pandemic, the number of active users of Google Classroom doubled to 100m.
The government has helped facilitate big tech’s expansion in education. In late April it announced a scheme to provide free technical support and training in Google and Microsoft education digital tools. More than 6,500 primary and secondary schools in England – over a quarter of the total – signed up. Since then, some 2.4m new user accounts have been created for the two platforms. In April Google donated 4,000 free Chromebooks, and 100,000 wifi hotspots, for students in rural areas of California for home learning.
Critics, like the writer Naomi Klein, say the tech giants were quick to see COVID-19 as an opportunity to accelerate their ambitions in education. In June, for example, Microsoft published a position paper called Education Reimagined. “The fallout from COVID-19, continuing advances in digital technology, and intensifying pent-up demand for student-centred learning have combined to present an unprecedented opportunity to transform education across whole systems,” it states.
But will schools continue their digitally enhanced approach, post-pandemic? Investors certainly think so. Global investment of venture capital in edtech more than doubled from $7bn in 2019 to a record $16.1bn in 2020, according to market intelligence consultancy HolonIQ.
Others, too, believe the shift will be permanent. “COVID has given an impetus to schools to adopt, roll out and use more of the functionality of edtech tools,” says Hannah Owen, of the Nesta innovation foundation. “It’s likely, and optimal, that we’ll move to blended models, where remote and digital platforms support in-person classroom teaching, and contribute to minimising teacher workload.”
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