Less Technology, Better Learning: Getting the Balance Right

There is an interesting shift occurring in education, and I think it is one worth paying attention to.

For more than two decades, schools have quite rightly embraced technology as a tool for learning. Our students can access information instantly, collaborate across continents, create sophisticated multimedia productions and use digital tools that simply did not exist when many of us were at school. But increasingly, the question educators are asking is not “How can we use more technology?” but rather “When does technology genuinely improve learning and when does it get in the way?”

The Victorian Government has now announced a significant change to digital learning from 2027. From Term 1 next year, secondary schools will be expected to incorporate planned device-free learning time into their teaching and learning programs. The intention is clear: where devices are used, they should be used intentionally, rather than becoming the default mode of instruction.  For primary students, the changes go further. From 2027, digital device use in Years 3–6 is expected to be limited to a maximum of 90 minutes per day, while Foundation–Year 2 is expected to have minimal device use, except where digital technologies are specifically required by the curriculum. This is not an argument against technology. In fact, I think it is an important argument for using technology well. A device should not be in front of a student simply because it is available. Sometimes the best learning experience involves a laptop, an interactive simulation or AI. At other times, the best learning involves putting the device away: writing by hand, reading a physical text, solving a problem on a whiteboard, discussing an idea face-to-face, conducting an experiment, making something, performing, debating or simply thinking.

The Victorian policy itself makes this distinction. It states that technology use should be carefully planned, teacher-led and connected to identified learning purposes rather than being the default mode of instruction. I think this represents an important maturation in our thinking about digital learning. When technology first entered our classrooms, the challenge was often how to get teachers and students to embrace it. Today, our challenge is different. Our children are growing up surrounded by screens. Their capacity to access information is huge, but so too is the risk of distraction, fragmented attention and becoming accustomed to constant stimulation.

Our responsibility as educators is therefore not simply to teach students how to use technology. It is to teach them when to use it, when not to use it, and how to remain in control of it. That is a much more sophisticated form of digital literacy. It also points to something fundamental about great teaching: technology is a tool, not the teacher. The most beneficial learning continues to depend upon strong relationships, expert teachers, rich discussion, deliberate practice, feedback, curiosity, challenge and the opportunity to think deeply. Sometimes technology enhances these things enormously. Sometimes it does not.

At Kingswood College, our commitment to being future-ready does not mean preparing young people to live in a world filled with more and more devices. It means preparing them to navigate that world with confidence, reasonable judgement and agency. Our students will enter workplaces where artificial intelligence, automation and digital technologies will be increasingly embedded in almost everything they do. They will need to be highly digitally capable. But they will also need to communicate, collaborate, concentrate, create, solve problems, exercise judgement and build meaningful relationships. Those capabilities cannot all be developed through a screen. A significant lesson from the changes coming in 2027 is therefore not that schools should use less technology. It is that we should use technology with greater purpose. And that, ultimately, is what providing a great education has always asked us to do: choose the tools that best serve the learning, rather than allowing the tools to determine the learning. As we continue to shape our own approach at Kingswood, this balance will remain important. We want our students to be confident creators and users of technology, while also ensuring they have the capacity to put it aside, look up, listen carefully, think deeply and engage fully with the people and world around them. The future is digital. But the students we prepare for that future must remain deeply human.