Winchester College, one of Britain's most academically selective boarding schools, has made pen and paper the default for most classwork and homework, restricting laptops to lessons where teachers can demonstrate a concrete educational benefit from using them.
Headmaster Elizabeth Stone told that screens were creating distraction rather than learning, describing what pupils did on devices as "fragmented attention switching" rather than genuine multitasking. She said the school had observed a spike in internet activity at the start of the school day, with pupils using lesson time to check emails.
The policy, introduced in September last year, requires younger pupils to complete homework exclusively by hand. Stone told the school had "shifted the burden of proof", making clear to teachers that laptops should not be the default tool and that technology should only be introduced where it offers demonstrable value.
The move goes beyond phone restrictions. Stone argued that banning phones while handing pupils unrestricted laptop access would simply shift the same distracting behaviours to a larger screen, a point with direct relevance as generative AI tools become more accessible to school-age users.
Winchester has also announced a research collaboration with Oxford University to examine how technology affects learning, signalling that the school is not rejecting digital tools outright but seeking an evidence base for when they help and when they hinder.
The school's stance lands at a moment when AI in education is accelerating rapidly. For professionals and employers, the debate is no longer only about phone distraction , it is about whether widespread AI-assisted work is eroding the capacity for sustained, independent thinking that underpins career progression and complex decision-making.
Source : The Sunday Times
