From smartphones to smart whiteboards, technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate, and, as a consequence, screens are becoming ever more present in our lives. 

And while schools face pressure to embed technology across all aspects of the curriculum, it remains a polarising topic for parents, with some seeing tech literacy as the key to future careers, whereas others want schools to provide a safe haven for children away from screens. 

To unpick this dilemma I met with Will Orr-Ewing, co-founder of Keystone Tutors, ARKA Learning, and the school advisor for Smartphone-Free Childhood - a campaign that's signed up 100,000 parents in its first four months. 

Starting with the topic of Smartphones in Schools, Will was cautiously optimistic that the dial was already moving. 

‘Most educators now understand that the harms of smartphones for children outweigh the benefits. It's more a question of the pragmatics of getting them out in the way.

There are three ways of doing that, either just ban them from the premises, which is quite hard, because parents like them for travelling to and from school, but not impossible, using lockers and using special phone pouches.’ 

But aren’t most schools already on top of this? I was surprised to learn that only 11% of UK schools are Smartphone free. Will wants to shift that figure to 80% within three years. 

‘Every school says, 'Oh, we have a smartphone policy. They're not meant to be seen or heard, and they get confiscated if they're seen.' 

But we know your children get 237 notifications a day on average. If a child has a smartphone in their pocket or in their bag, then it is af ecting them in a very damaging way.’

And there’s mounting evidence to back this up. Screen time: Impacts on education and wellbeing, a House of Commons Committee report, found it could take up to 20 minutes for students to refocus following a distraction such as a notification on their phone. While a recent LSE study in four UK cities showed student test scores increased by an average of 6.4% following a full school ban. 

So why, I ask, aren’t more schools taking note? 

‘The problem is collective action. As a parent or as a school, if you're the only one to move on this issue, then it doesn't do that much, because you're just isolating your child from their peer group. But if you can move collectively, it's much more powerful.’ 

Moving on to the role of technology in schools more broadly, I wanted to understand Will’s take. After all, preparing children and young adults for a future world of work that’s rapidly evolving - surely that’s a central question for schools today?

‘It's definitely a real question that a lot of people are wrestling with, but there's quite a lot of understandably imprecise thinking around this topic. 

To be very technically able, or to have digital skills, does that mean you need to spend all your time saturated in a digital experience? That's not how we approach other things in education. 

If we want our kids to be highly numerate and highly literate, it's not that we just saturate them in in numeracy and literacy. We're very particular about the sort of cognitive skills we want to develop. 

Their critical thinking, their ability to focus and attend, their ability to read. All of these are prerequisite skills to being productive online as well as of line.’

Pressed to give an example of a school he thinks is tackling this issue head on, Will points to the Heritage School in Cambridge - the UK’s only officially screen-free Secondary school. It’s an institution whose pedagogy prioritises attention, memory, and engagement in a way he sees as a refreshing counterpoint to the instant gratification we expect of digital interactions. 

‘I've visited probably six or seven times. There's a level of attentive engagement in the school which feels very new and very distinctive. 

They use a specific method called narration, where they have to listen to stories - it could be the story of a scientific experiment or of an artist. They listen for about 10 minutes and then are asked to recite back to the teacher what they've heard. And that sounds quite repetitive, but when you hear the children, it's really quite extraordinary.

It's a bit like food. It's like they've ingested what they've heard, they've, processed it, and then are bringing it back, but it's become a part of them. So of course it's not word for word. They've owned the knowledge in some way. And that's really good for their memory, and really good for their engagement with the content.’ 

I found it hard not to play devil's advocate. Surely in the age of the internet and large language AI models, knowledge retention and rote learning have become less important than how we use information? Shouldn’t we give up teaching facts and all learn to code? Will firmly disagreed: 

‘The insight from watching children use the internet is, the more you know, the more you get out of it. I’m talking about helping them build a rich tapestry of knowledge, not isolated facts.

I’m a big believer in the permanent things for building a curriculum. 

In the age of AI, it's going to be that knowledge of philosophical truths, artistic truths, that are going to endure much more than the specific technical skills of using Excel or PowerPoint or Canva or the like. 

Personally, I think it's outrageous that for the last 15 years, kids have been told one of the most important things they can do is to learn how to code, because with AI, they're now saying the demand for software engineers might go down to zero, or very close to that.’

With that settled, and our meeting drawing to a close, I asked Will for a few bits of parting advice for schools in our readership that might be grappling with these challenges:

‘Spend time as a senior leadership team thinking about the skills that you really prioritize, and then be really considerate about how your culture fosters them or inhibits them. 

Be brave and back your instincts. 

My experience of parents, is that they are desperate for leadership and vision when it comes to schools. As soon as something is explained to them, like the educational rationale and the vision, usually they come on board.’

Will is putting this screen-free philosophy into practice in his new tutoring business, ARKA Learning.