Computers do not noticeably improve school children’s academic results and can even hamper performance, according to a report that looked at the impact of technology in classrooms across the globe.
While nearly three-quarters of all the students surveyed from 64 different countries said they used a computer at school, the report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that technology had made no improvement in results.
In fact, in countries that reported the most technology use in the classroom, such as Spain, Sweden and Australia, students’ reading performance actually declined between 2000 and 2012.
In South Korea and Hong Kong, students used computers for an average of roughly 10 minutes at school – just a fraction of the full hour spent on the internet by Australian students, for instance.
Conversely, in these Asian countries where less than half the students reported using computers at school, the children were among the top performers in reading and computer-based mathematics tests, according to OECD’s assessment program.
According to a British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) report published in January, UK schools are expected to spend £623 million on ICT in 2015, with £95m spent on software and digital content. But this clearly doesn’t correlate with better performance.
The most “disappointing” finding of the report, according to OECD’s education director Andreas Schleicher, is that technology does not seem to have an impact in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students.
“Put simply, ensuring that every child attains a baseline level of proficiency in reading and mathematics seems to do more to create equal opportunities in a digital world than can be achieved by expanding or subsidising access to high-tech devices and services,” he said in a foreword to the report.
The report did not recommend using less technology in classrooms, but instead rethinking how it was implemented. While digital textbooks and online mathematics problems work well, copying and pasting text from the web wasn’t as useful.
“In the end, technology can amplify great teaching, but great technology cannot replace poor teaching,” Schleicher said.
ARYAN'S BLOG 