About a decade ago, the people I dreaded meeting most at parties were the ed tech evangelists – men and women who lit up with zealous excitement about bringing screens into schools. If only every schoolchild had a laptop, they thought, then humanity could flourish, nurtured by the great river of the internet and by an exciting stream of educational apps. It was as if a school laptop was a Mary Poppins bag out of which whatever they most wanted was sure to appear. For the ed tech utopians of the right, what they dreamt of was a great stream of savvy little Einsteins, liberated from turgid teachers. For those on the left, it was about equal access, fairness, ‘pupil-centered learning’. Both enjoyed talking eagerly of ‘enhanced engagement’ as fellow guests muttered into their drinks and backed away.

The chief ed tech evangelist at the time was Bill Gates, who in 2013 announced that computers in classrooms would, over the next decade, revolutionize education. ‘The power of the digital platform is just going to keep getting better and better,’ he promised.

Poor Bill. More bad news is not what he needs right now, but that decade has passed and the effects of the revolution are horribly clear. Screens in schools have been catastrophic. Wherever they’ve been introduced, pupils’ scores have not only failed to improve but have declined – significantly and relentlessly. Because of screen-learning, for the first time in modern history a younger generation is........

© The Spectator