Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. Whilst I support the use of the latest technology in the classroom, it must always remain in a way that improves the education for the child, and doesn’t simply ease the teacher’s workload. The answer to overworked teachers should always be more teachers, not more computers. There is no substitute for the praise of a teacher who is respected and liked by their pupils, and a computer can never give the encouragement that a teacher can. On the one hand, we are telling parents it’s a bad idea for their children to spend too much time in front of their iPads and laptops, but when it suits us, we encourage it in the classroom. By increasing the use of computers for assessment, we are downgrading the status of teachers and encouraging isolation in the classroom, when we should be fostering interaction. An apple was only ever meant to be a gift for the teacher, not a replacement for them.

I welcome that the Cabinet Secretary values personalised assessment, but I certainly would question whether this is a new thing, as the statement infers. Surely, teachers assess pupils in terms of each child or young person’s individual development on an ongoing basis already. Surely, they’ve been doing this since the profession began. As regards the Cabinet Secretary’s attempt to differentiate the tests that school pupils in England and Wales sit, I’d say that it’s irrelevant to the child what the school or anybody else will do with those results. A test is a test is a test from the point of view of the person sitting it.

So, I would like to ask the Cabinet Secretary what thoughts she has had on making sure children remain primarily educated by humans rather than programmers. Would it be sensible to propose some kind of monitoring of the amount of time pupils spend working and being assessed via computer? Have you asked the young people and their parents for their thoughts on the increasing androidisation of their education?