Member

I have raised the issues of edtech—the lack of privacy, the lack of evidence for learning outcomes and, in particular, some very serious known problems of safeguarding tech—with the Department for Education several times and to several Ministers. Each meeting is met with a level of shock at the evidence I produce and a determination to act, but then the department decides that providing schools with more guidance is the answer: guidance on data protection, guidance on AI, guidance on safeguarding for teachers and schools to understand and implement. There is nothing for the regulator, nothing for the companies and nothing that responds to the well-established fact that products need to be designed for privacy and safety by default. Given the known power imbalance of a company such as Microsoft or Google and a school DPO, or the skills and transparency gap between a product developer and a school safeguarding lead, heaping more burden and responsibility on teachers rather than using the tools of good government, law, regulation, certification and procurement power to foster ethical innovation is, I think, a failure of common sense if not leadership.