B

Baroness Kidron (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 18 September 2025

Debate

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Contribution

I just want to raise the question of timing. The Government, as the Minister says, are putting a huge amount of money into digital infrastructure and, as later amendments that she will turn to say, putting assessment online and so on. I am trying to understand why it takes decades to get the rules in place, and why we have not yet learned that we need to put them in place as we put the infra- structure in. I will read the debate very carefully, and I respect the generous way in which the Minister answered, but I sit here as someone who has been fighting for nearly a decade for something that is still being promised some time before 2030. I am finding it very difficult to put that together with the idea that we are now making a huge investment in edtech, that this is going to be central to children’s lives and that the Government will be responsible for the outcomes. Many noble Lords across the House have said that we want edtech and learning, and to be part of this movement, but look at what is happening around the edges. It is being treated like a commercial market, not a pedagogical outcome, a safety outcome or, indeed, an inclusive one, as the noble Lord was referring to.

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