Why Are We Teaching Our Primary School Learners Digital Skills? - Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts exploring the question, "Why are we teaching our primary school learners digital skills?" In this post, I provide an overview of what EdTech looks like in the Welsh primary school classroom, contrasting the vast public investment with some of the commonly held, and perhaps often unquestioned, beliefs about what digital tools can offer our young learners.

Setting the Scene - Edtech in the Primary School Classroom (Wales)

The adoption of digital technologies by schools has, according to UNESCO, "resulted in many changes in education and learning," adding that "the set of basic skills that young people are expected to learn in school, at least in richer countries, has expanded to include a broad range of new ones to navigate the digital world. In many classrooms, paper has been replaced by screens and pens by keyboards." 

In Welsh primary schools it is rare to see the computer suites of old, with digital technologies now in the hands of the learner in the classroom. You will find a mixture of digital devices across the school, from Bee-Bots to BBC Micro:bits, iPads to Chromebooks and laptops. The predominance of Chromebooks and laptops in particular, reflecting the browser-based, cloud approach to learning underpinned by both the Digital Competence Framework (DCF) and the Science and Technology area of learning and experience, along with Hwb, the national platform. The DCF being a mandatory, cross curricular framework for maintained schools that is designed to help learners from 3 to 16 years old develop their digital skills across the curriculum. The Science and Technology AoLE focused around computation being the "foundation for our digital world" and introduces learners to computer science aspects such as, algorithms, digital systems, computer networks and data. Hwb is the Welsh Government's national digital learning platform that is free to all maintained schools across Wales. A platform that schools are not mandated to use, but one that the Welsh Government strongly promotes, highlighting the advantages of a consistent national approach, ensuring "that all learners benefit from a safe, secure, and equitable digital learning environment....maximising the benefits of digital learning in the classroom."

Launched in 2012, Hwb operates as a national digital service supporting over 1,480 maintained schools across Wales, with over 450,000 learners and 55,000 education practitioners. Every child in a maintained school in Wales has a Hwb login, which gains them access to an ecosystem of free, cloud-based tools and digital bilingual resources. The cloud-based tools include, Microsoft Office 365, Google for Education and Just2easy, which are all provided free to learners. In practice this means that a primary aged child might, across a typical week, be using Word or Google Docs to support their writing, J2e creative tools for infant learners, and Microsoft or Google online classroom areas for online assignments set by their teacher.

There are additional tools available through Hwb for learners which include Minecraft Education Edition. Microsoft describes this product as game-based learning, which can also drive meaningful learning, whilst also preparing learners for a digital future. Learners also have access to Adobe Express, a product that allows them to creatively explore text, image and sound, including generative AI features which primary school learners are beginning to explore.

Outside of the Hwb ecosystem, many primary schools can also be found subscribing to cloud-based platforms to further help and support their learners, common examples can include Seesaw, ClassDojo, PurpleMash, Mathletics and Giglets. 

But what are schools and importantly learners, actually doing with these devices and platforms day to day? The picture is varied. According to Estyn's (the school inspectorate in Wales) annual primary sector report for 2024 /25, learners are using digital technologies in the following ways:

• Enhancing General Learning: In most schools, pupils use digital technology regularly to support and enhance their learning across different areas of the curriculum.
• Applying Cross-Curricular Skills: In a few schools, teachers ensured that pupils made progress in a wide range of digital skills and provided worthwhile opportunities for them to apply these skills purposefully.
• Exploring Artificial Intelligence: Learners in a few schools have begun to explore the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance their learning experiences.

However, Estyn also highlight several issues around the strategic development of learner's digital skills across the primary school:

• Inconsistent Provision: A few schools received a recommendation to improve provision for supporting pupils’ progress in digital competence.
• Narrow Skill Range, Poor Planning for Next Steps and Insufficient Progress: In the schools referred to above, the curriculum did not provide a broad enough range of skills and teachers did not consider pupils’ next steps in learning effectively. Often in these schools pupils did not build on their skills at a swift enough pace to make the progress they should.
• Online Safety Concerns: The citizenship strand of the Digital Competence Framework (DCF) is not always considered carefully enough.
• Lack of Safety Understanding: Because online safety is sometimes overlooked, pupils in those schools do not develop a secure understanding of how to keep themselves and others safe online at home or at school.

Some digital technology related activities will be genuinely purposeful; making presentations about a topic, collecting and analysing data to answer questions, coding, accessing resources and researching or creating animations and videos. It’s arguable that a portion of time would also be spent by learners on app-based activities or online 'gamified' learning platforms, which might present themselves as educational but whose direct causal link to robust, transferable learning outcomes remains an area of ongoing debate and skepticism. Something that I hope to explore in a future post.

Critically, this in-school use of digital technologies, sits on top of screen time our learners are already accumulating at home. One Welsh survey recently found that 1 in 5 primary aged learners spent over 7 hours daily on phones and tablets, while some 10 to 11 year olds reported up to 9 hours of screen time on the weekend. Surveys such as this, very rarely appear to take into account the time these children may spend on digital devices whilst in school, so the cumulative daily total for some primary aged children in Wales could well be considerable.

While the majority of primary schools in Wales are effectively using digital technologies to support and enhance learning across the curriculum, this otherwise positive backdrop is, as pointed out by Estyn, complicated by the presence of factors like inconsistent skill progression, critical online safety gaps in some of our primary schools, and for our young learners an increasing cumulative screen time. This complex and sometimes problematic reality provides the backdrop for our core question, "Why are we teaching our primary school learners digital skills?"

What EdTech is Believed to Do

Let's now look at some of the reasons why governments embrace and mandate that schools should teach primary school learners how to be digitally competent and in doing so, exposing young children to a variety of digital devices, apps and cloud-based online platforms. This narrative or belief is actually the dominant orthodoxy in educational policy not only in Wales and the rest of the UK but also with many education systems around the world (Europe, North America, South Korea, Japan and Australia, for instance). In Wales this approach is backed by significant public investment (over £167 million since 2019), Curriculum for Wales momentum, and research. The argument for child-facing EdTech in primary schools appears to rest on several claims.

Enhancing Learner Engagement and Motivation

Perhaps the most frequently cited benefit is that EdTech enhances learner engagement and motivation. In over 25 years of working in EdTech, this is certainly the most common reason I’ve been given for using digital technologies in the classroom. UNESCO noted that some would argue that digital technology creates engaging learning environments and enlivens student experiences. Research has documented that the use of ICT can result in positive gains in learner attention, motivation, and attitudes towards learning. The argument is often fairly straightforward, children who are more engaged learn more, and if devices and applications sustain that engagement, they are serving a legitimate pedagogical purpose. This is an argument I actually remember using myself as one of the reasons for the introduction of the interactive whiteboards into schools across Newport in 2003. Higher levels of engagement can be related to greater academic success, well being and fewer behaviour problems. In the primary classroom this could manifest as games-based learning platforms such as Mathletics, or multimedia content that holds the learner’s attention in ways a traditional worksheet or textbook might not.

Digital Equity

Closing the digital skills divide is a key reason for introducing children to digital literacy at an early age, with closing that gap being a policy priority for many countries. Governments view digital equity as a fundamental prerequisite for ensuring that all learners can fulfil their potential in an increasingly digitalised society. By placing digital technologies in the hands of learners, governments aim to bridge the digital divide, the gap in access to infrastructure, high-quality resources, and skills training that often disadvantages low-income, rural, and underrepresented groups. 

A major driver for the Welsh Government is its commitment to ensure "equity of access," prioritising "inclusivity and equity", specifically addressing the digital divide that can hinder learners from lower-income backgrounds. They believe that digital equity is centred on ensuring that every learner, regardless of background, has the tools and skills to thrive in a digital world. This is primarily facilitated through Hwb, creating the digital infrastructure, that also included funding for 320,500 devices to bridge the digital divide and in so, "creating a platform that supports teachers in effectively integrating digital tools while ensuring that every learner, regardless of background or location, has equal access to high-quality educational resources."

By 2026, the Welsh government's definition of equity shifted from basic internet access, which is now nearly universal at 98.4% for UK households with children, to achieving a Minimum Digital Living Standard. This includes not only hardware and connectivity but also the "critical digital literacy" needed to navigate online harms and misinformation. To support this, a new Digital Inclusion Wales Grant was launched in Nov 2025 to fund community projects that boost digital confidence and essential skills. Cabinet Secretary for Education, Lynne Neagle, said:

“This year we have invested £12 million in schools’ digital provision, and are fully committed to enhancing schools’ digital environments, with £167 million invested since 2019. This includes providing devices for learners and practitioners to ensure equity of access to digital technology. Having one agreement funded by Welsh Government demonstrates the commitment to digital equity and inclusion for our learners and help to ease the financial pressure on schools, enabling them to maximise the benefits of digital technology in education. Many learners already benefit from this agreement, but I want to raise awareness that these digital services are freely available for learners and teachers to use at home."

Personalised and Self-Directed Learning

Another claim is that EdTech enables learning to be tailored to the individual child in ways a single teacher managing thirty pupils simply cannot achieve. Platforms may present themselves as adaptive, adjusting difficulty, tracking progress, and responding to individual needs in real time. The appeal to teachers is clear, and the principle that children can move at their own pace through digital content is genuinely attractive as an idea. The UK government (England) is particularly excited about the potential of AI tutoring tools, which they believe will provide “personalised, one-to-one learning support, levelling the playing field for those who cannot afford private tutors.”

Improving Literacy or Numeracy Outcomes

Proponents point to positive academic benefits, particularly in literacy and numeracy skills when effectively used by teachers. Numeracy platforms like Times Tables Rock Stars, widely used in primary schools, credited with improving recall and fluency in multiplication. Another numeracy online platform Mathletics, claiming that "30 minutes of Mathletics a week gave students a 9% advantage over their peers in national test scores." According to the Education Endowment Foundation research, there is generally a small, positive impact on literacy outcomes for primary school learners. Evidence also suggesting that digital technologies often have a greater impact on low and middle ability learners.

Inclusion and Accessibility

One of the biggest arguments for learner EdTech is its role in supporting learners with additional needs. For children with dyslexia, autism, motor difficulties, or speech and language needs, specific assistive technology tools can offer access to learning that would otherwise be significantly harder to achieve. This is perhaps the strongest and most defensible claim in the pro-EdTech case, and one that deserves to be treated separately from the broader argument about general classroom device and application use.

Preparing Children for a Digital World

Finally, and perhaps one of the most common beliefs about EdTech, especially one I hear from teachers, is that "we are preparing children for the future" or to put it another way, making the children 'future ready'. Children growing up today enter a world saturated with digital technologies, and the logic follows that schools which deny children early, structured experience of digital tools are failing to prepare them adequately for adult life and in navigating this increasingly digital world. In Wales this argument has particular policy traction, embedded as it is within the Curriculum for Wales and its cross-curricular digital competence framework aimed at learners from the age of 3 years old. UNESCO noted that education is unlikely to be relevant without digital technology and that the right to education could include effective support by technology for all learners to fulfil their potential, regardless of context or circumstance. 

While the accepted EdTech narrative presented above is not without some merit, when examined closely, it can reveal a significant gap between what EdTech is believed to do and what the evidence actually demonstrates. This is what I will examine in Part 2.