An ed-tech tragedy? Educational technologies and school closures in the time of COVID-19

Prologue excerpt from Baroness Beeban Kidron, Chair and Founder of 5Rights Foundation.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? debunks the widely held assumption that ed-tech saved the day for children during the pandemic. Page by page, the analysis of tragedy unfolds, in which governments and school leaders unwittingly collude with the tech sector to transform education from a public good into private gain. In the process, teacher-led education was undermined and troubling new norms emerged: unfettered pupil surveillance, an amplification of existing inequalities and algorithmic injustice at an unprecedented scale. Not for a moment tech-phobic, the book challenges us to make child development, curiosity and the collective good the primary goals of education and to demand greater transparency and evidence from ed-tech. Thoughtful, fair and frightening, this is a book that exposes the folly of outsourcing education provision on the shiny – and unsupported – promises of new technology rather than investing in the long-term health of buildings, teachers and families. It deserves attention from all.