Educational Technology

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight, who has just demonstrated his extraordinary depth of knowledge in both education and technology. In fact, it is rather daunting to speak after him and the two noble Baronesses. Rather than declare my interests, I feel I have to do the opposite and declare my lack of knowledge, as I am not an educationalist at all, other than being the mother of two teenage daughters. I speak solely from my experience in digital transformation and digital regulation in other sectors.

With that caveat, I will dare to say a few points. From other sectors, there are four things that we know, which I would like to pull out. The first is obvious: the huge opportunity coupled and paired with the risks that digital technology brings. The yin and the yang are visible in every single place that digital goes. The second thing we know is that you cannot stop it. As my noble friend describes, the Luddites failed, as has everyone else who has attempted to stop technology. Like water in a flood, it finds a way through. You cannot ban it; you also cannot ignore it. We know that from every other sector.

Thirdly, the problem is not the technology, but the people. In every sector, it is people who make technological change hard. While 98% of the population embrace technology in an open, whole-hearted, moral and legal way, there will always be those who use technology in other ways. Change, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to, involves people changing. We know that from every sector that digital has touched, but it is hard in every sector.

Fourthly, every sector is learning that it has to lean in itself. It is not possible to do what my parents did, which was to abdicate responsibility for the DVD or video player to the younger generation to program, because they did not know how. With technology, it is hugely tempting to want to abdicate responsibility to the “experts”, to the CTO or the technology function. Every sector is learning that you cannot do that. Educationalists, just like politicians, cannot abdicate this to other people. We have to lean in and learn ourselves.

It is here already. As I tried to mug up a little bit on the edtech sector in advance of this debate, I was really struck by some statistics from an RM Technology research pamphlet, published in June 2023. It did some research on 1,000 secondary school students this summer: 67% of them already used chatbots such as ChatGPT—67%, just six months after it launched—and 48% said that excluding it would really hold them back. However, 38% said they felt guilty about using it. Teenagers are expressing the yin and yang already: the opportunity and the threat of that new technology.

Those of us who have worked together on online safety for many years know that we were far too slow to challenge the tech exceptionalism in child online safety. We were far too slow to win the argument that self-regulation was patently not going to be fine. I worry that there is a real risk of almost a double exceptionalism here: the tech exceptionalism, of “Don’t worry, self-regulation will be fine”, coupled with the “Education is different, it’s all a bit too complicated; we need to leave it to the educational establishment and teachers—don’t worry”. Through that double exceptionalism, I was shocked to discover that the age-appropriate design code does not apply to education technology. I do not know why. Can my noble friend the Minister say why would we not extend the age-appropriate design code to edtech? We know that safety by design is the way to build in the right checks and balances for opportunity and risk in digital. If that is not regulated, it does not happen—we have seen that time and again in social media. While it is easy for me to say, “Lean in”, we must really invest to lean in and learn about the technologies. Can my noble friend the Minister say what the Department for Education is doing to build its knowledge as these new technologies grow?

I sit on the Lords Communications and Digital Committee, which is currently doing an inquiry into large language models. We have asked a whole series of regulators how prepared they are to regulate AI. I am ashamed to say that I do not think we have asked anyone in education, so I will do so now. I am keen to understand what the department is doing to build its expertise in large language models, because we can see they are being used. How many AI experts and data scientists does the department have? Is it starting to put together a regulatory sandbox? These are all questions we are asking other regulators and I suggest that the Department for Education should look at them too.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Knight, I too want to highlight the importance of digital inclusion. It is all very well for us to discuss the opportunities and risks of all this wonderful technology, but the harsh reality is that far too many children are growing up in this country without access to it at all. According to Ofcom’s 2023 media use and attitudes report, 19% of 16 to 24 year-olds use only a smartphone to go online. Imagine trying to do your homework just with a smartphone—possibly one that is shared among the whole family. That is a huge disadvantage, which serves to exacerbate all the things that I know the department is working so hard to try to improve.

The report showed that 28% of 16 to 24 year-olds are only “narrow” internet users, which Ofcom defines as those who use the internet for only one to four activities out of a defined list of 13. These are not technical—buying things, streaming videos, looking for jobs or using it for research. That is a very large proportion of our young people without a broad range of basic digital skills. What are we doing in education to ensure that all pupils have basic digital skills and access to more than just a smartphone?

The opportunities are so great—I am a tech evangelist in so many ways—but the risks are also very real. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, standards and oversight need to be in every sector. Probably none is more important than education.