It’s a question that dominates headlines, staffroom debates, and parent WhatsApp groups. And it’s almost always the wrong question.
At the MEET conference in March, Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith opened her keynote with a simpler version of the same provocation. We don’t blame chairs for bad posture. We don’t talk about whether chairs are good or bad for children. We talk about the activities we do when using them.
The same logic applies to screens. And now, thanks to an 18-month independent study across 20 schools and 8,500 pupils, there is some of the most rigorous evidence yet to help us understand this.
What the research actually says
The IFtL Impact Report – Impacting Learning: Impacting Futures – has just been published. It’s an independent study led by Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith in partnership with Inspiring Futures through Learning (IFtL), a multi-academy trust that introduced 1:1 iPad provision for all learners from Year 2 upwards.
This isn’t a vendor-funded survey or a one-off observation. It’s 150 classroom observations, 3,979 survey responses from children, teachers and leaders, and 64 focus groups – conducted over 18 months by a team of 93 leaders and teachers.
The headline findings are striking.
98% of leaders and 93% of teachers reported that digital tools make a positive impact on children’s learning. Since the introduction of 1:1 iPads, the number of children achieving age-related expectations across Reading, Writing and Maths has risen by 8% – against a relatively static national average. Suspension rates have dropped by up to 50% in some schools. And 72% of leaders reported notable improvements in classroom behaviour.
That’s not a case study. That’s a body of evidence.
93% of teachers reported that digital tools make a positive impact on children’s learning.
The right question
The report is unambiguous about why the outcomes were so strong. The focus was always about learning.
IFtL’s mantra – digital tools should amplify learning, never get in the way – sounds simple. But behind it is a deliberate, pedagogy-first framework that shaped every decision about which tools to use, how to train staff, and how to evaluate impact over time.
Dr Aubrey-Smith has a name for this distinction. An EdTech mindset asks: how can we use digital tools to support our pedagogy? A PedTech mindset asks: what is our pedagogy, and how could digital tools support, extend or enhance it (or where should it stay out of the way)? The tool is not the pivot. The pedagogy is.
The report found that the longer a school embeds this pedagogy-first approach, the greater the impact on learning outcomes. The children achieving greater depth in writing across LEO Academy Trust – another trust that has worked with Dr Aubrey-Smith – is now more than triple the national average.
The tool doesn’t create that. The intent does.
The longer a school embeds this pedagogy-first approach, the greater the impact on learning outcomes.
What this means for AI
Recently at MATPN Digital, a day dedicated to strengthening teaching through technology, trust leaders gathered to ask an almost identical question to the one at the heart of the IFtL report – not whether to use AI, but how to use it well. And more importantly: why.
That distinction matters. Because the trusts seeing the strongest results from AI aren’t the ones who moved fastest. They’re the ones who started with the clearest purpose.
At TKAT – Kemnal Academy Trust – the purpose was specific: fortnightly writing assessments through the Autumn term. They validated the approach, built teacher confidence, then rolled out across 14 secondaries. 32,000 mock essays marked. 70 hours of CPD time returned to every teacher. Zero additional workload.
At The Challenge Academy Trust the purpose was different: drive Grade 5 results in GCSE English Literature. One school pilot. Accuracy proved. Then trust-wide rollout. The result: a 13% uplift in Grade 5 English Lit.
Different trusts. Different purposes. The same discipline that underpins the IFtL findings: start with the pedagogy, not the product.
As our CEO Lucien Bowater put it at MATPN Digital: “The only question that really matters isn’t ‘does it work?’ It’s ‘does it work for us? In your schools, with your teachers, with your budget?'”
Start with the pedagogy, not the product.
Back to the chair
The IFtL report is worth reading in full – not for the headline numbers, but for what it reveals about implementation. The trust didn’t just hand out iPads. They built a culture: Future Ambassadors, communities of practice, a deliberate framework for how technology decisions were made. Every tool had to earn its place by supporting the “Characteristics of Effective Learners” – their pedagogical north star.
That’s the same logic underpinning effective AI adoption. Fiona’s framework distinguishes between low-demand screen use (stare and submit), active use (receive and react), and genuinely high-impact use (empower and enact). The difference isn’t the tool. It’s the task, and the intent behind it.
The same logic applies to AI in marking and assessment. Olex isn’t a replacement for teacher judgement – it’s a way to give teachers more of it, sooner. When teachers have 30 essays marked in two minutes rather than two weeks, the question becomes: what do we do with that? How does it change the next lesson? What does it tell us about the cohort?
Those are pedagogical questions. The AI enables them. It doesn’t answer them.
We don’t blame chairs for bad posture. But we do design better chairs, train people to sit well, and think about what we’re actually trying to do when we sit down.
So our question should not be about using more or less digital or screen time.
But going back to far more fundamental questions – What is the role of the teacher? What is the point of school? When we are clear on those – then we can bring in digital tools to support, extend and enhance clear and precise pedagogical direction.
To find out how Olex supports pedagogy-first writing assessment in your schools, book a demo.
