Labour under fire for touchscreen assessment plans for four-year-olds
Bridget Phillipson has come under fire over guidance calling for children as young as four to be tested using touchscreen devices.
The Department for Education (DfE) has written new guidelines, to come into effect from the next term, requiring schools to assess reception-age pupils using screens.
Campaigners have said that the change 'implicitly endorses and normalises device use in reception classes' and risks 'undermining the rights of parents' to restrict their children's screen time.
Politicians, teachers and campaigners sent a letter to the Education Secretary and Peter Kyle, the Technology Secretary, urging that the guidance be immediately revoked.
Signatories include Katharine Birbalsingh, known as Britain's strictest headteacher, Justine Roberts, the founder of Mumsnet, and Sophie Winkleman.
The letter said: 'We are united in our deep concern at this retrograde step which pushes our youngest schoolchildren, the majority of whom will be just four years old, on to touchscreen devices, and which implicitly endorses and normalises device use in reception classes.'
The new statutory Reception Baseline Assessment will involve a teacher using a device to conduct the assessment, with the child carrying out the test with a second touchscreen device.
The assessment, done within six weeks of a child starting at reception, has usually involved the use of toys and teddy bears.
The Government now says: 'Your child will complete the assessment by: using a touchscreen device; answering questions verbally with the teacher; working with materials given to them by the school.'
A spokesman for the DfE defended the guidance, telling The Telegraph that 'digital assessments reduce the administrative burden on teachers, freeing up their time to focus more on teaching and supporting pupils' learning.'
Campaigners said that, with some exceptions for children with special educational needs, a screen-based assessment 'can only be inferior' to the previous model.
They added that doing so risks 'undermining the rights of parents to raise their children in a screen-free, or 'screen-lite', environment, as many are now choosing to do'.
'Protect childhood'
The letter has also been backed by Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, as well as other MPs from the Conservatives, Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.
Ms Trott told The Telegraph: 'Testing children as young as four on screens, instead of using books or physical objects, undermines their development. The evidence of lasting damage to children so young is now overwhelming. We must change course and protect childhood.
'We've sleepwalked into a society where children are increasingly glued to screens rather than engaging with the world and each other.'
The Conservatives are working to ban smartphones in schools and stop exam boards from shifting assessments to online-only.
Ms Trott said: 'If we don't act now, future generations will not forgive us.'
Mr Kyle has repeatedly stated the Government's aim to protect children from online harms, including restricting their time on social media.
Earlier this month, it was reported that he was considering introducing a time limit on social media apps for children and a 10pm curfew.
A spokesman for the DfE said: 'Giving every child the best start in life is central to our mission to break the link between background and success, and our Plan for Change will help get thousands more children school-ready by age five.
'These assessments give a clear picture of children's abilities when they start reception to measure progress by the end of primary school. They are carried out one-on-one with a teacher, so for children who are unable to use a device, verbal responses can be input by their teacher, and paper-based versions are available.
'Digital assessments reduce the administrative burden on teachers, freeing up their time to focus more on teaching and supporting pupils' learning.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
38 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Mel Stride: We will never do a deal with Reform
Sir Mel Stride has vowed the Tories will never make a pact with Reform as he attacked the party's 'fantasy economics'. The shadow chancellor said Nigel Farage's party would put the economy on 'the road to ruin' and said: 'I don't want to be a populist that runs around saying we can do this, that and everything else for you without any plan behind it. I just think that's recklessness.' Sir Mel also attacked Rachel Reeves's 'huge borrowing splurge' to fund spending plans until the next election, but warned that Reform's pledges were even more 'dangerous'. While some influential Tories have called for the parties to work more closely together, Sir Mel said the Conservatives would never strike a deal under his watch. 'I don't want to get involved with a party that peddles fantasy economics,' he told The Telegraph. 'Why would I want to do that? I want to be with a party that is going to be four-square behind fiscal responsibility and manage our economy in a way that doesn't imperil the livelihoods of people up and down our country.' His comments come as the Conservatives seek to fight back against Reform, which has surged past the party in the polls to take the position of Labour's de facto main opposition. Many observers believe the Tories are still paying the price of Liz Truss's mini-Budget of unfunded tax cuts, which triggered the market chaos that led to her downfall. The Conservatives' polling numbers collapsed in the wake of the crisis and have never recovered. Sir Mel has chosen to disavow the policies of Ms Truss as the Conservatives seek to rebuild. He also warned that a Reform victory may lead to a sequel. Reform's central election pledge is to raise the amount people can earn before they start paying tax to £20,000. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has estimated this could cost up to £80bn, although Reform has insisted its plans would be fully funded by sweeping cuts to Whitehall departments and said it would not cut taxes until it had slashed spending first. However, raising the tax threshold is just one of several costly promises made by Mr Farage's party. Reform has also pledged to cut corporation tax and abolish the two-child benefit cap that restricts payments to families with three or more children. Sir Mel said: '[They're] promising everybody everything they want to hear, without any credible plan as to how they're going to pay for any of this. Certainly, if Reform were in No 10 now, I think the economy would be in a very dangerous position.' While he now spends much of his time in attack mode, Sir Mel offers up little of substance when it comes to policies of his own. He says Britain is failing the young and suggests the Government should do more to crack down on Mickey Mouse degrees that do little to increase people's job prospects. But just as he suggests universities may have a role in sharing the financial burden of dead-end degrees, he stops himself to insist the proposal is just 'blue-sky thinking in an interview'. This caution has allowed Reform to steal the limelight with its eye-catching proposals as the Tories struggle to get their mojo back. Sir Mel, who almost lost his Central Devon seat at the last election, admits his party 'lost connection entirely with the British electorate and we have to win that back – and that will take time'. For now, he believes the best way to do that is by highlighting the flaws in Reform's policy platform. 'What we've got to do is be out there making the case that people need to think long and hard about whether the numbers add up, because if they don't, that is the road to ruin,' Sir Mel says. 'Right now, Reform is ahead in the polls [and] they are out there saying they will take everybody out of tax up to £20,000 at a cost of £50bn to £80bn – about a third of what we spend on the NHS every year, with its 1.3m employees. Really? How are they going to fund that?' The Conservatives' slump in the polls had to put pressure on Kemi Badenoch but Sir Mel said she was 'absolutely' the right person to lead the party. This is Sir Mel's 11th interview of the day and he's only halfway through his commitments. Stationed in the shadow cabinet room in Westminster, he's armed with two copies of the cornflower blue spending review book, one of which is covered in scribbled notes that include a reminder to talk about GDP figures out that morning to attack lines such as 'summer of speculation, fear of what will come'. Sir Mel, a self-confessed history buff, suggests the Tories would be prepared to take the tough decisions to slash the size of the state if they got back into power. The man who led a series of sweeping reforms to the benefits system insists 'we need to get a grip on welfare' as he opened the door to a conversation about the NHS. While qualifying that the health service is an 'absolutely vital part of what we are as a civilised society', he signals there will be choices to come 'around what the health service does'. Sir Mel says: 'What is possible at different points in time changes. For example, the idea of my grandparents going to hospital, getting both hips replaced and leaping around like a mountain goat within weeks would have been entirely fancy. We have drugs today that can do things that we didn't have the drugs to do in the past. So it will be an evolving terrain. 'But my fundamental point is that if you run a health service that is not productive, that is consuming ever larger levels of resources and is not really producing in the way that it can, then you're not serving the British people properly.' While he is reluctant to talk specific policies, he suggests one of his priorities is to address tax traps that can leave people facing punishing tax rates for every extra hour worked, including the so-called 60pc trap where people who earn above £100,000 gradually have their personal allowance withdrawn. 'There are definitely aspects of the complications within the tax system that slow economic activity,' he says. 'The personal allowance gets withdrawn above a certain level of income and that leads to high marginal tax rates. 'The interaction with the benefit system can produce similar effects to the withdrawal of child benefit where you can actually reach marginal tax rates of 70pc or more. So there are all sorts of things that we need to think very deeply about within our tax system.' Young people are also firmly on his mind, with Sir Mel frequently citing the fact that the average Tory voter is 63. He wants to change that. 'We have to have a big, bold, credible offer that shows younger people that they can have the opportunities that I had as a young man. The education that will lead to higher-paying jobs so they can get on the housing ladder.' He has put forward a proposal for a 'Headstart' scheme under which a person in their first job would see their first £5,000 of National Insurance paid not to HMRC but into a personal savings pot which they could use as a down-payment for a house. Before he can be drawn on detail, he steps back again, saying the proposal is 'just one idea we're discussing'. 'We will have the answers through time,' he insists. 'I'm not the Chancellor, I'm not in the Treasury.' Judging by the polls, he will have to work hard to change that.
Telegraph
38 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Labour's 1970s employment rights bill could send Britain over the edge
Rachel Reeves made vast spending pledges last week in a bid to placate fellow ministers, Labour MPs and party activists and save her political skin. She made no effort whatsoever to explain how she will pay. Yes, this was the Chancellor's spending review. We will get more detail on taxation and borrowing, the other side of the Government's ledger, during her next annual Budget, expected in late October or early November. Given how borrowing has ramped up over recent months, though – with debt interest payments surging as gilt yields have soared – it's astonishing that Reeves said absolutely nothing to reassure financial markets during her House of Commons speech. Back in March 2024, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasted borrowing for the financial year from April 2024 to April 2025 of £87bn. After the first Labour budget in 14 years last October – during which Reeves increased borrowing and taxation by a combined £70bn, green-lighting hefty public sector pay deals, net zero projects and much else on her party's ideological wish-list – the year's borrowing forecast ballooned to £127.5bn. Spool forward to the March Spring Statement and estimated 2024-25 borrowing was up another £10bn, to £137.3bn. And by the time the financial year ended a month later, the total had surged again to £148.3bn, a rise in our national debt in a single year more than £60bn up on the forecast Labour inherited on entering government last July. Reeves claims endlessly to have 'discovered a £22bn black hole in the public finances left by the Tories' on taking office. This is fictitious nonsense, used by ministers to justify tax rises not mentioned in Labour's election manifesto. But even if you accept this rhetorical tosh, which I don't, the £60bn-plus rise in borrowing in 2024-25 alone is almost three times bigger. The more Reeves drones on about 'the black hole we inherited', as she did yet again at the top of her speech last Wednesday, the more she undermines her fast-diminishing credibility in the eyes of financial markets. That's yet another thing she simply can't afford. Before last October's budget, the 30-year gilt yield – the rate of interest charged by investors to lend the UK government long-term money – was about 4.35pc. Yields in recent weeks have moved in a range of 5.25-5.5pc, having been above the 4.85pc peak during the height of the 'Liz Truss mini-Budget crisis' for the whole of this year. Yes, sovereign bonds yields have risen in other highly-indebted Western nations since last autumn. But 30-year yields in France, Germany and Italy are all considerably lower and have gone up far less (by less than half a percentage point in each case). Plus, about a quarter of the UK's sovereign debt is index-linked, far more than other G7 economies, which makes us uniquely vulnerable, with debt-service costs spiralling rapidly upward as inflationary pressures rise. After what shadow chancellor Mel Stride rightly called a 'spend now, tax later' spending review, we're now in for 'a cruel summer of speculation'. Cash-strapped companies and households will now angst about yet more Labour tax rises in this autumn's Budget. The fine print of last week's Treasury documents shows Reeves's plans are predicated on council tax in England rising by 5pc every year during the rest of this Parliament. The only way the UK can avoid a really serious fiscal crisis is to get economic growth going on – with more consumption and investment driving tax receipts up and a larger economy then more able to shoulder our huge national debt stock. Yet the day after Reeves's statement came news the economy shrank 0.3pc during April – the first monthly drop in headline GDP for six months and the worst single month since October 2023. Labour's 25pc rise in employer national insurance contributions (NIC), implemented from April, has seriously hammered hiring. Provisional data shows payroll employment fell by a vast 109,000 in May alone, with employment having fallen every single month since this ill-judged NIC rise was announced last October. And now, just as we really need to get people back to work, to kick-start growth, Labour's employment rights bill is set to clear Parliament. Deeply counterproductive, this legislation takes the UK back to the 1970s by significantly increasing trade union influence, a sure-fire route to stagnation. Championed by 'Red Queen' Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, this bill removes qualifying periods for sick pay, maternity pay and unfair dismissal, granting all of these from day one of employment. No wonder countless employer surveys point to fears of lawsuits and greater reluctance to take on more staff. The legislation repeals plenty of the trade union controls from the early-and mid-1980s onwards that rescued Britain from the dystopian and destructive industrial relations of my childhood. The 50pc threshold for strike ballots is set to go, along with vital minimum service levels during industrial action, handing ever more bargaining power to Labour's trade union paymasters. Creating new finger-pointing quangos to chide employers, and requirements for companies to implement endless 'equality action plans', there are also insidious 'opt out' clauses designed to maximise worker contributions to unions and therefore the Labour party, with scant disclosure. It is yet another example of how the Government is determined to replace enterprise, prosperity and opportunity with regulation, entitlement and state overreach. I'm amazed this ghastly legislation has attracted so little media attention. It must be vigorously opposed and called out by the leadership of both the Tories and Reform, the only two parties likely to acknowledge the dangers. Because unless the economy gets going, and the UK escapes this low-growth, high-borrowing, high-tax doom loop, we're heading for a serious fiscal crisis.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Sweeping changes to 'archaic' Jersey family laws urged
Jersey deputies are being urged not to have a "knee-jerk reaction" to updating the island's parenting Colley, a legal assistant in family law at Viberts, said a "wholesale review" of parenting laws was needed to remove "outdated" Affairs Minister Deputy Mary Le Hegarat proposed changing Jersey's parenting laws so children born out of wedlock were no longer considered "illegitimate".Several islanders considered illegitimate by law told the BBC they were unaware of the legal status. Ms Colley said a strategic review was needed to prevent further changes being introduced in the future and, if changes were made to the Legitimacy (Jersey) Law 1973, it would have to be "done carefully"."In practical terms I do not think that the change in the law will have any real impact on families," she said."However, the concept of an illegitimate child is very outdated and there does need to be a wholesale review of all the legislation that makes reference to this term."There are laws currently that even mean that if a child is born to a couple who are still married and the husband is not the biological father of the child, it is still the case that the child is his child until that child is illegitimised, for example. "This has probably been an outdated legal concept for decades and has never been reviewed by legislators."In the UK, the Family Reform Act 1987 removed all remaining legal distinctions between children born to married and unmarried parents. 'Modernise the laws' Ms Colley said there were also issues with children born to unmarried parents prior to the law change in 2016."The fathers of these children do not have parental responsibility for their child, even if they subsequently marry the child's mother," she said."This is why it is important not just to have a quick knee-jerk reaction to this issue and take time to properly modernise the laws relating to the island's children."The BBC spoke to many islanders about the proposal who were unaware of their legal status. 'Archaic concept' Dylan Rawlinson said it had not affected him but added the law was "a very archaic concept".Other islanders who did not want to be named said they had experienced some said people thought her surname was her father's, not her mother's, which she took at said their parent's had "a nightmare" when trying to change their surname "when they did eventually get married" - saying it "cost thousands".One mother said her children had "never once been referred to as illegitimate on anything or [by] anyone since they were born". Proposing the changes, Le Hegarat had said Jersey's law was "out of step with policy developments over the last few decades"."The option of abolishing the status of legitimacy is strongly preferable, as it is no longer reflective of modern family life," she said."Only children whose parents are married and in a mixed-sex relationship are currently provided with the status of being 'legitimate' at birth."
