Are Schools Entering a New Era Beyond Screens?

For years, one direction in education seemed almost inevitable: more devices, more digital content, and more learning through screens. Now, some school systems are beginning to ask a different question.

On September 13, 2026, the New South Wales Department of Education announced that public schools will begin limiting classroom screen use in 2027, with the limits becoming mandatory in 2028. Kindergarten through Year 2 students will generally be limited to 15 minutes a day of individual device use. The allowance rises gradually with age, reaching up to one quarter of class time per subject in Years 7 through 10 and up to half in Years 11 and 12.

The state will also recommend at least an hour each day of learning with pen and paper, and digital devices will not be recommended for homework before Year 5. The policy includes exemptions and adjustments for students who need digital supports.

That is a striking development after years in which many schools expanded individual device programs. But perhaps the important question is not whether schools are turning against technology. It is whether they are becoming more selective about when technology actually improves learning.

Why this conversation is happening now

The New South Wales announcement came only days after the release of PISA 2025.

Across OECD countries, average reading and mathematics performance fell to their lowest levels recorded by PISA. Reading scores declined by 28 points between 2015 and 2025, about a year and a half of learning according to the OECD, and mathematics scores fell by 22 points.

Digital distraction is part of the picture. More than one in four students reported that classmates were distracted by digital devices in most or every science lesson. At the same time, the OECD found that moderate use of digital tools for learning can be associated with stronger performance, while excessive use and distraction are associated with weaker outcomes.

That distinction matters. The results do not prove that screens caused the decline in achievement. Student learning is shaped by many factors. But the findings do make it harder to assume that more technology automatically means better learning.

A screen can let a student code, run a scientific simulation, analyze real world data, collaborate, translate, or use assistive technology. It can also become a place to skim, switch tabs, check a notification, or complete an activity that might have been more meaningful through discussion, writing, reading, or hands on work. The device itself does not tell us which of those things is happening.

Paper versus screen may be the wrong question

There is evidence worth considering in the renewed interest in print and handwriting. A 2026 network meta analysis comparing paper with computers, tablets, e readers, and smartphones ranked paper highest for reading comprehension overall. The advantage was especially noticeable when digital reading required scrolling.

There is, however, an important qualification. Many of the studies involved college students reading science texts in English. When scrolling was not required, the researchers found no reliable difference between paper and the digital formats they examined.

Another 2024 meta analysis of 37 experimental studies found no significant overall difference between paper and digital reading, with outcomes varying depending on the reader, the text, and the reading conditions.

So paper versus screen may be too simple a question. Reading a long, demanding text is different from manipulating a virtual model of a molecule. Writing out mathematical reasoning is different from creating a multimedia presentation. Watching a video passively is different from writing code.

The educational value is not determined by whether electricity is involved. It is determined by what the student is being asked to think, notice, remember, create, discuss, and do.

What cellphone bans are teaching us

The debate over phones offers another useful lesson. A September 10 Brookings analysis followed a nationally representative sample of U.S. teenagers across the 2025 to 2026 school year. Nearly all attended schools with some type of cellphone restriction.

Students still reported more phone use at school by the end of the year, although the increase was smaller in schools with stricter policies that applied throughout the school day. Most students also reported that the restrictions had no major effect on measures such as happiness, stress, or relationships with teachers.

The researchers nevertheless concluded that stronger policies reduced phone use and supported continued enforcement of restrictions that last throughout the school day. That suggests something broader: removing a device does not automatically create engagement.

A phone free classroom can still contain an uninteresting lesson. A screen free assignment can still ask students to do shallow work. And a technology rich classroom can still involve deep thinking. The quality of the learning experience remains the central issue.

Screens should not be the default, and neither should paper

Education has a tendency to move from one default to another. For a time, putting more technology in classrooms was often treated as progress. Now there is a risk of assuming the reverse, that removing technology is progress.

Neither is a particularly useful principle.

UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report on technology in education offers a better standard. Technology can expand access, support students with disabilities, provide new ways to practise and represent ideas, and create opportunities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible. But UNESCO also warns that evidence for the added value of many education technologies remains limited and argues that technology should support human interaction rather than replace it.

Instead of asking, “How much technology should we use?” schools might ask a more useful question: What does technology make possible here that improves the learning?

If students are reading a complex text, would paper help them slow down and annotate more carefully? If they are working through a mathematical idea, would writing out their reasoning make their thinking more visible? If they are discussing an ethical problem, would closing laptops create a better conversation?

The questions should also go the other way. Could a simulation make an invisible scientific process visible? Could a digital tool give a student meaningful feedback? Could technology provide accessibility, real world data, creative possibilities, or connections that paper cannot?

The goal should not be less technology for its own sake. The goal should be better decisions about technology.

From digital adoption to digital judgment

Perhaps we are not entering a post screen era at all. Screens are not disappearing from education, nor should they. Digital literacy, computing, AI literacy, media literacy, and data analysis are likely to become even more important.

What may be ending is the assumption that more technology is automatically more innovative. That may be a healthy shift.

Sometimes a teacher may simply say, “Close the laptops,” not because technology is harmful, but because this particular part of learning is better without it. The same principle applies to artificial intelligence. Students need to understand AI and learn to use it responsibly, but that does not mean AI belongs in every assignment. Sometimes productive struggle, memory, drafting, calculation, discussion, or independent problem solving is the learning.

The most future ready classroom may not be the one with the most devices turned on. It may be the classroom where teachers and students understand what each tool is for and are equally comfortable putting it away.

Sometimes the right tool will be an AI system, a laptop, or a simulation. Sometimes it will be a pencil, a book, a conversation, or an empty sheet of paper.

Perhaps the next phase of educational technology will not be defined by how much technology schools adopt, but by how thoughtfully they decide when to use it and when not to.