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Centring every child, human control and oversight in the design of technology in schools

Three panels. First, "Does it work?": rows of identical grey dots with one line through them, labelled "the average", and the caption "One result for all children." Second, "Is it designed for every child?": children shown as different shapes and colours, one ringed and labelled "your child", and the caption "Each child is different." Third, "Where edtech sits": inside "school", the teacher and the school connect to edtech, which connects to your child; inside "home", a parent or carer connects to your child; talk, books, play and making sit beside edtech; the caption reads "One part of how a child learns." Beneath: "Designed so that:" and the five design lines.

Technology in schools should empower and enable all rather than select and limit some. ETTOL supports technology in schools with critical human oversight, as one part of a much wider range of ways to teach and learn. Technology should not be all there is in schools. ETTOL exists to prompt more attention to child-centred design and review in edtech. Our view is that child-centred design is what should be celebrated. AI in edtech is changing quickly, and parents and teachers need information now. ETTOL is not a benchmark for marketing.

Companies should set out where their responsibility starts and stops. They should aim to know how their tools behave for different groups of children, and say what was tested, with which children, and how, and what has not been tested. They should say how they know that overlaps between groups, for example a child who is both disabled and learning English, are not affecting their results. The schools white paper (opens in a new tab) sets out SEND training for all school staff because that training is needed. So a company cannot assume that every teacher is already able to catch what a tool gets wrong for pupils with diverse strengths and needs, and a tool's design should not rely on it. Where a company passes that responsibility to the user, users should be told.