- primarytechreview
- Dec 22, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 24, 2025
In November 2025, the Department for Education published the Technology in Schools Survey 2024-2025.
1,634 schools participated in the survey, including 795 school leaders, 1,211 teachers and 489 IT leads.
The survey provides a good basis for reflecting on the rationale for incorporating technology into primary education.
Findings and commentary
These are some aspects of the review concerning digital strategy in primary education with commentary, exploring implications.
Secondary schools were more likely to have a digital strategy in place than primary schools.
A digital strategy is an extension of the school's overall ethos and strategy. The school's digital strategy identifies how digital technology can facilitate some of the school's wider aims. A digital strategy which evaluates the current situation, identifies a long-term goal and then breaks this into steps is crucial. Children's needs at primary age are different to those of secondary children and this will be reflected in the content of the school's strategy.
45% of primary teachers felt that the school clearly communicated the school's digital strategy, an increase from 26% in 2023.
Schools should communicate digital strategy to staff, as well as to students and parents. This will be done at different levels, but all parties should have an awareness of how technology should be deployed during the year and what long term goals are.
87% of teachers said that there was a school policy that guided them in using technology in lessons. Most (56%) were guided by this policy, but also able to make their own decisions about technology use.
A school's digital strategy should reflect the ethos and aims of the school. It should also reflect the needs and specialisms of its staff and students. All staff should be aware of the overall aim for using technology in school to ensure that technology is used with clear goals in mind and at a high level.
67% of primary leaders and 53% of primary teachers felt that technology had made a positive impact on pupil attainment. 2% of leaders and 3% of teachers said technology had made a negative impact on attainment. 80% of leaders and 66% of teachers thought that technology would raise attainment in the next 3 years.
The term, 'technology' here is obviously very broad, and could include teacher admin tools, lesson presentational tools and pupil devices. What is important is that effectiveness of use of technology is constantly reviewed, measured against attainment across the curriculum. Technology has the potential to improve learning on any subject, but this does not mean it should be used in every lesson, or be a focus. Particularly at primary-level, children need to develop communication skills, confidence and resilience and in some cases, face-to-face interaction will be the preferred method for developing these things. Practical activities are fundamental across the curriculum, including use of concrete resources in Maths, games and PE and practical Science experiments. Of course, technology has the potential to enhance even practical activities, but teachers will need to think carefully about its deployment in primary settings.
67% of teachers had undertaken training in educational technology in the last 12 months. The most common topics were pupil safety (36%), new software (31%) and generative AI. (29%).
73% of leaders reported that availability of CPD was a barrier to the increased use of technology.
Considering the E-safety issues that are arising, including use of mobile phones by young children, cyberbullying and unsupervised use of technology outside school, 36% seems low for teachers being trained in safe use of technology. Training in use of technology does not need to be provided externally, although this can be beneficial. Schools can use the excellent resources provided by organisations such as Project Evolve and the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE). Schools and teachers should invest in quality CPD that has been chosen in accordance with the school's digital strategy. This could be external CPD, or CPD provided by organisations such as Google or Apple. Schools and staff should also be encouraged to network through organisations like Computing at Schools and STEM Learning.
44% of teachers reported using generative AI for school activities. It was most often used for lesson planning (35%) and used by 7% for lesson activities and 5% for marking.
Part of schools' digital strategy should include how AI can be used to achieve this strategy. If lesson planning is identified as something that the school wishes to improve, it may be that AI tools can help achieve this. Likewise, schools may wish to improve marking and feedback, pupil agency or accessibility of resources. Fundamentally, it is important to start with the aims before considering whether AI, or other technologies are the right tools to achieve these.
22% of school leaders had an evaluation plan in place for evaluating the effectiveness of technology. 26% were developing an evaluation plan.
The PICRAT model is an excellent tool for schools to use in evaluating effectiveness of technology. Effectiveness should also be measured against the school's overall aims and wider performance indicators.
42% of primary teachers said that pupils use end-user devices in less than 10% of lessons. Only 3% said that pupils use end-user devices in 76%-99% of lessons.
It is clear that in primary lessons, most pupils do not use devices routinely in the majority of lessons. This may be because at primary level, other skills take precedence, such as communication and fine motor skills. It is also likely due to availability of devices, as well as the time that pupils spend logging into devices and opening work etc. It is to be expected that as pupils become older and approach secondary age, they will start using technology more for their work. I would argue that even young children can benefit from having easy access to devices to use simple tools like Voice Memo on iPads to record their ideas, or Google Classroom to access resources independently and quickly.
Technology was most used to support the following learning activities: homework by 86% of teachers, collaborative learning by 82% of teachers and reading comprehension strategies by 74% of teachers. Some of this usage was considered to be 'sometimes/rarely'.
Terms, 'homework' and 'collaborative learning' encompass such a wide range of potential activities that it is difficult to draw many conclusions about how technology is being used, even by discussing these as learning activities. What homework and collaborative learning both have in common is that children may be working independently from a teacher. Technology may be being deployed to give children agency in their work, with opportunities for teacher feedback and discussion later. This model of learning, similar to 'flipped learning', and models of learning which develop children's agency, curiosity and problem solving are areas that have potential benefits from use of technology.
The biggest factor reported by school leaders in deciding whether to invest in technology was budget available (91%). The second biggest factor was evidence of good practice in schools (75%).
Any investment in technology should take place after considerations around the school's priorities, ethos, strategy and then digital strategy. Once these are established, money can often be spend very wisely, to a large effect. Schools will need to provide infrastructure and devices, but beyond this, many educational services are provided for free. The initial discussion about strategy and subsequent training are what will help schools spend money effectively.
The highest priority among primary teachers for investment/training over the next three years was supporting pupils with SEND (51%).
It is fantastic that awareness among teachers of how technology can be used to remove barriers to learning is now so high. The mantra, 'what is needed for some is beneficial for all' also applies here; deployment of technology has the potential to remove barriers for all children in lessons.
Concluding thoughts
The Technology in Schools survey 2024-2025 provides an important and thought-provoking reflection of how technology is being used in schools. This is particularly timely, as schools weigh up deployment of could-based services, AI tools and virtual learning environments.
Successful use of technology in schools stems from clearly defined school strategies, linked with awareness of the potential benefits that technology can provide. Schools must establish their priorities, being aware of opportunities and challenges linked to digital technology. Time spent exploring and discussing these, networking with other schools and receiving selected, targeted training will pay off and lead to effective and purposeful use of technology in school.
- primarytechreview
- Nov 26, 2025
- 6 min read
The 2025 Curriculum Review
According to the November 2025 Curriculum Review, oracy is one of the five areas areas of applied knowledge identified as needing more attention within the curriculum. (The others were financial literacy, media literacy, digital literacy and education on climate change and sustainability. Political knowledge was also an area raised frequently by young people.)
The curriculum review considers oracy to incorporate,
'Speaking, listening and communication, including verbal as well as other forms of non-written communication, such as sign language, non-verbal and Alternative and Augmentative Communication.'
The curriculum review outlines a vision of oracy being part of 'horizontal coherence in the curriculum', proving children with 'a coordinated and logical arrangement of topics across subjects, as well as within them.'
The curriculum review recommended that the government,
'Introduce an oracy framework to support practise and compliment the existing frameworks for reading and writing.'
The 2025 curriculum review makes a strong case for oracy being a part of subjects across the curriculum and a framework being developed to ensure this. It highlights oracy as being an area of children's education that needs to be developed and formalised, alongside developing fields like media literacy and digital literacy. Importantly, the curriculum review recommends that oracy be part of all subjects across the curriculum and not left to the speaking and listening requirements of English.
What is oracy?
The National Centre for Excellence in Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) defines oracy as,
'The ability to express your thoughts and ideas fluently through speech.'
According to the Chartered College of Teaching,
'The term, 'oracy', can refer to the ability to communicate effectively, articulate thoughts and engage in meaningful discussions.'
'Talk for writing' has for a long time, been recognised as an important aspect of children producing written work fluently and effectively. Under talk for writing, children are given the opportunity to verbalise their ideas and explore expressions and vocabulary through talking, before committing these to paper or indeed, to coding.
Oracy takes this idea further, recognising that speaking is not just a means to an end, but an end in itself. Oracy recognises that effective spoken communication is vital for children's social development, self-confidence and ability to participate in work and social environments. It is difficult to think of a career where string oracy skills are not an advantage and for this reason alone, the development of oracy should be organised and begin early, as the curriculum review recommends.
Opportunities to develop oracy in primary computing
Scaffolding oracy
In computing, as within other subjects, teachers can provide children with scaffolds for expressing their spoken opinions, views and experience about a topic. Scaffolding helps children to structure their answers. Scaffolds can gradually be removed or adjusted as children grown in confidence. Scaffolding can include providing children with useful expressions, key vocabulary, prompts or useful sentence structures.
There are plenty of opportunities for debate and discussion in computing. These can include debate and discussions about how code might work, or debate about the implications of technology in the world. Debate in computing can be a good way to develops children's critical thinking, digital literacy and AI literacy. Providing hypothetical scenarios for children to debate is a good way to develop both children's digital literacy and oracy skills. In all debate activities, teachers can provide children with expressions and vocabulary to use that challenges them to improve the quality of their spoken responses.
Reading and predicting code
In this blog post, I wrote about the importance of reading code and how this should be at least as commonplace as children writing their own code.
As well as reading code, children should be given the opportunity to talk about it, make predictions and suggest ways that it could be improved, or ways that it might mot work. They can do this in pair, small groups or in presentations to the class.
As stated above, children will benefit from examples of good-quality spoken responses to code and scaffolding to help them structure their own good quality, spoken responses.
Unplugged activities
Unplugged activities are an established aspect of primary computing lessons. In unplugged activities, children explore concepts relating to computing away from screens, often using physical props or role play.
Goof examples of unplugged activities include children acting out the behaviour of characters in a computer game, robots in a task or the behaviour of packets of information across a network.
In these situations, children can sue and develop their oracy skills by explaining the behaviour of technology, developing their spoken communicative skills and strengthening their understanding of concepts in computing.
Digital literacy
Digital literacy is one of the three strands of computing. It is concerned with teaching children to use technology safely, responsibly, effectively and in a discerning way.
Children can use and develop their oracy skills and digital literacy skills by engaging in discussions, debates and presentations about safe and effective use of technology. A simple way to facilitate this is to provide children with scenarios for discussion at the start of a lesson. These scenarios can be as simple as a picture on the screen. By talking about what might have happened and shat should happen in different scenarios, children learn about digital literacy and have the opportunity to develop their spoken communicative skills.
For digital literacy lessons to be truly effective, children need to gain knowledge and understanding about issues relating to safe and effective use of technology. Teachers should provide children with age-appropriate facts, statistics and information that they can draw upon, strengthening both their understanding and spoken opinions and arguments. Teachers could take this further and use digital literacy topics as the basis for formal debates.
Computational thinking tasks
The national curriculum for computing mentions computational thinking as something that children should develop in computing lessons.
Computational thinking is usually defined as decomposing a problem, spotting patterns, abstraction and algorithm design.
Computational thinking can, and should be, part of computer tasks, including programming and media tasks. Children should learn to break these tasks down and approach them systematically, filtering out unneeded parts of the task and spotting patterns.
Teachers may also provide children with opportunities to develop this thinking through non-screen based activities. Children can be given classic, physical problems to solve (think building a marshmallow tower...). After several of these types of challenges, where the teacher point out good computational thinking, children will get better at approaching tasks systematically. The teacher can also work in opportunities foe oracy, as children suggest approaches, assign roles, negotiate and develop their ability to communicate effectively.
Discussing how games work
Most children will love the opportunity to talk about how their favourite games work. This can develop both children's oracy and computer science skills, particularly if the teacher prompts them to use language relating to computing, such as 'if', 'when', 'until' and 'change ... by'.
Game/project design, presentations
As part of their work in computing, children may be given the opportunity to work collaboratively on programming and design tasks. They may be given the task of designing a physical system, using equipment such as Crumble. They may be asked to design a game, or an animation using Scratch. They may even be asked to work on a project like Apps for Good, which I consider to be one of the most meaningful experiences children at key stage 2 or 3 can have. I wrote about Apps for Good in a blog post here.
As part of projects like these, children can be expected to present their ideas and their project. In this way, work done in computing can have crossover links with work done in written subjects like English. Presentations are also another way in which children can develop their oracy skills.
iMovie, podcasts, Book Creator
Filmmaking and podcasts are an enjoyable and important way for children to express their ideas and create digital content. By making films, children learn to convey an idea or a story they have in an engaging and powerful way, making use of camera angles, props and dialogue.
Children who make films will develop their oracy skills as they write and perform their speech, and also as they work within a team and decide the best way in which to tell their story. The Across Asia Film Festival (AAYFF) has some good examples of short films created by primary-age children.
Conclusions
Oracy has been rightly recognised as a crucial skill for children to develop. Oracy is a life skill and children who develop good spoken skills will be more successful in almost every career and aspect of adult life.
Development of oracy also benefits outcomes in subjects, including computing. Children who are able to verbalise their ideas coherently and confidently using high-quality language and phrases will be far more successful when they are writing, or coding independently. They will hear the 'inner voice' they have developed through practising oracy as they write scripts, programs or think tasks through.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, oracy gives children self confidence and self esteem in social situations by enabling them to communicate effectively with their peers. For these reasons, oracy should be a part of computing and subjects across the curriculum, as recommended by the 2025 curriculum review.
- primarytechreview
- Nov 18, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Nov 23, 2025
Sports technology harnesses the power of digital devices and apps to enhance performance. What is the potential of sports technology at primary level, when children's PE lessons provide them with vital time being outside, being active and developing communication skills?
Sports technology in professional sports
The margins in professional sports events are tiny, yet incredibly significant. Sports technology is used to measure the performance of athletes, provide data for analysis and offer targeted solutions for improvement.
Ways that technology is used in sport include:
Video analysis of games and passages of play, highlighting individual and team positioning strengths and weaknesses
Measurement of body metrics, including heartrate, breathing and perspiration
Data relating to movement, participation in a game, speed, distance covered, passes, number and accuracy of shots
Analysis of posture and technique
Automated practise systems, such as reaction training systems, batting machines and exercise machines
Precise and immediate measurements and data including time, distance, speed and scoring
Assisted refereeing or scoring of games, such as VAR in football
It is important to remember that sports technology is a valued field in itself. The value of sporting performance means that individuals who learn to harness technology to improve the performance of athletes highly sought after. Similarly, companies and individuals earn large amounts of money from selling products and services that improve performance.
Sports technology in primary schools
To what extent can and should sports technology be used in primary PE lessons, sporting events and fixtures? Which of the benefits to professional sports can be replicated by using technology at primary level?
At primary level, as well as developing children's fitness, physical skills and sporting ability, PE lessons also develop a number of vital interpersonal skills. These are referenced in the primary national curriculum, which states,
'Opportunities to compete in sport and other activities build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect'
There is a strong case that PE lessons should prioritise opportunities for children to develop their physical and interpersonal skills.
However, I would not go so far as to say that use of sports technology can never be a focus in primary PE lessons.
The national curriculum also states,
'They (children) should develop an understanding of how to improve in different physical activities and sports and learn how to evaluate and recognise their own success.'
Some PE lessons might be focused on teaching children effective ways to utilise technology to record, evaluate and improve their performance. Although the above statement can be achieved through means such as peer review, data collection and self-evaluation, use of technology seems to offer a valuable means of self-evaluation, as we will see with examples below.
iPads, Cameras and Markup
iPads are a good solution for schools that wish to incorporate sports technology into PE lessons. They are lightweight, portable and quick to open and use at short notice in a lesson.
iPads also have a number of apps and features that make them well-suited to use in primary PE lessons. The reality of a busy primary PE lesson is that for sports technology to be used, it needs to be simple and operate seamlessly in the lesson without distracting from the physical activity taking place.
Camera
Using the iPad camera, children can watch videos of themselves performing movements and sporting activities. This is particularly effective if the iPad is on a fixed position, such as mounted on a tripod.
Children can film themselves and other performing almost any aspect of movement or sport. Examples of activities that benefit from filming and viewing include:
Shooting, throwing, striking the ball in football, netball, rugby, tennis or hockey
Gymnastics, jumping, balancing
Running, long jump, extending and stretching, using the whole body
Technique in sports that require repetition and precision such as archery
Markup
Once teachers or children have taken photos of themselves or others, they can save photos and use Markup to annotate and draw on them.
This can be a useful tool, particularly for teachers pointing out accuracies or areas for development in technique. Teachers can combine Markup with screensharing, to project the Markup of student photos onto a teaching screen.
Markup might be particularly useful when annotating crucial movements, such as a jump, throw or piece of gymnastics. However, teachers could also set up cameras and use Markup to show good technique in kicking or striking balls.
Slow Motion
The slow motion tool on the iPad camera can be a useful tool for students and teachers to use when reviewing their movements. Using the slow motion tool, students can watch and re-watch their movements, looking for areas for development.
Measurement apps
There are measurement apps such as the AR Measure app, which allows for measurement by holding up an AR ruler. It is difficult to imagine how, in a primary PE lesson, this would be a superior tool to a tape measure, which through its tactile nature, also teaches children about precise measurement.
There are apps that measure speed available for iPad. Some are free and some are paid, and some are more suitable for use in primary education that others. Measuring the speed of a shot or strike of the ball, or a run can be a fun and motivational use of sports technology in primary schools.
Data collection and analysis
Using technology to collect data in sport means that visuals about that data can be generated very quickly. This is what we see with data collected in sports matches on TV.
A simple way of collecting data can be entering scores or times into a spreadsheet. This can then be displayed during or after sports activities. Spreadsheets can be set up that instantly calculate minimum times, maximum distances and averages. Tables can be generated to keep track of scores and points in games, even generating live league tables. Children find displaying data accurately very motivating, although displaying data may not be appropriate in every sports lesson
Of course, when data is entered into a table, graphs and charts can also be generated instantly, showing data visually to children.
Physical Computing (Microbit, Crumble)
It is possible to combine programming, engineering and sports technology using basic devices commonly used in schools.
Children can cerate variables that change depending on sensor inputs. In the Microbit example below, the variable 'steps' changes when the device shakes, creating a simple step counter. A Microbit programmed in this way can be worn by children during sports events to give a basic indicator of performance. Simple maths could be used to convert steps into distance covered, by dividing the number of steps by steps in a kilometre.
Crumbles feature a greater range of sensors, including light and distance sensors. Children can use the distance sensors to build simple devices that measure movement, such as press-ups or sit ups.
Technology use to promote sorts
Alongside technology being used in sports events, children can also use technology to promote sports events, plan for events and promote sporting behaviours. Some examples of this include:
Teamsheets - children can plan their line up and positions for sports games, even changing this during games
Motivational posters
Adverts for sporting events
Films about sporting events or interviews
My experience with sports technology
I have never played sport at a high standard, but I have seen the effects of simple uses of sports technology. Several years ago, I started archery as a hobby and progressed to beginner-level competitions. At that point, I saw the value of video analysis of technique, using a simple camera on a mobile phone. This allowed me to correct flaws in technique that I would never have realised without this analysis.
It is this simple, seamless use of technology that is likely to be most useful in primary settings, leading to improvements in technique, awareness of areas for development and curiosity in the exciting and important field of sports technology.
