A minister has expressed concerns about the “gamification” of ed tech, arguing that using such products “isn’t the way to learn”. Representatives of government departments were quizzed by the science and technology committee this week about the impact digital devices on children’s development. MP Emily Darlington (pictured above) asked early years minister Paul Waugh whether he was concerned about the use of games in ed tech. Paul Waugh “We definitely have concerns with that gamification. Gamification isn’t the way to learn,” he said. “That’s the propaganda they will give you, but it is all about driving their screen time and their screen use, so it’s profit driven.” Waugh acknowledged there were “ways of making learning fun. You don’t have to have a competition with yourself or with someone else in order to learn more effectively. “That’s precisely why all these ed tech products that we’re looking at, we’re making sure that it’s not about gamification.” He said ministers were focused on “making sure that this supports a teacher, it doesn’t supplant them. “That means that personal relationship a child has with their teacher – and that teacher knows them better than any AI will – is informed by technology, isn’t replaced by it.” Darlington referred to Times Table Rock Stars, which aims to encourage pupils to learn their multiplication tables. The algorithm is designed to tailor questions to target areas that students are struggling with. As they improve, the pupils can choose to move up different “rock statuses”. They can also earn coins to spend on clothes for their rock star avatar, but teachers can also close access to the shop. Safeguards in place Darlington told the committee pupils were “rewarded for how long [they] spend on it”. But the owners of the app insisted it actually rewards pupils based on their progress in maths. Bruno Reddy, founder and CEO of Maths Circle, which runs Times Table Rock Stars, said: “We understand the concern about children’s screen time, and we share it. “Many of us are parents and teachers, and we support measures to protect children from excessive or unhelpful screen use, including the social media ban.” He added that TTRS “isn’t a social media platform: there’s no chat or messaging. “But parents, teachers and MPs are right to ask every ed tech provider whether its products keep children on screens for longer than they need. It’s a question we put to ourselves regularly.” Every game in TTRS “is deliberately short, and our characters remind children to take regular breaks. “The rule of thumb we give schools is: three minutes, four or five times a week. In September, a typical child played on three days, for about six minutes each time. “We’ve deliberately steered away from features designed to keep children playing, such as streaks, random rewards, chat messages, loot boxes or notifications.” Other safeguards include sending users reminders to take a break if they have been using it for more than 30 minutes after school, and giving children the option to appear anonymous on the leaderboard. Teachers can set an upper limit for how long pupils spend answering questions each day before they are locked out. He added that by 24 November the curfew on usage will become a default, and so will having the leaderboards switched off. ‘Wild west’ Waugh told the committee there was a danger of there being a “wild west” of ed tech products, and that the planned ed tech certification scheme would help schools choose “safe and effective” products. Last week skills minister Jacqui Smith said the government is set to consult on the scheme this autumn. She added that this would lead to a published list of child-facing generative AI tools “which have been certified as meeting safety criteria, including data protection and safeguarding, for use in education settings”. Research by Inspired Education found schools were adopting AI tools quickly with the hope of getting better results, despite there being little long-term evidence on whether those tools make a difference to how those pupils progress. Tracking four academic years across its schools, it found students who engaged the most in the AI platform were 58 per cent more likely to exceed expected progress in maths, and 28 per cent more likely for English, than those who engaged the least. Waugh also discussed the government’s AI tutoring programme, saying it would consider safety features such as “making sure that it’s not anthropomorphised”, and that there is “constant monitoring of their content that’s coming in”.