Are we getting it right with tech in our schools? | Natasha Azzopardi & Luke Fenech

Natasha Azzopardi is a primary school teacher and a member of the Executive Committee at Momentum and Luke Fenech is a teacher of ethics education and casual lecturer at the University of Malta

You see it everywhere. Technology is completely tangled up in our kids’ lives here in Malta, and probably everywhere around the world. The big push to get more tech into our schools has us standing at a crossroads. As educators, we have to ask: Is this really the right way to go?

You have parents starting to band together, promising each other they’ll hold off on giving their kids smartphones. It’s a sign that people are worried. We’re all trying to figure out how this new digital life affects our children. Finding a balance is key. We need to be smart and careful, but not fearful, if we’re going to look out for our children.

Take the parental pledge at San Anton School. It’s a great idea. Parents agreeing to wait until 15 for a smartphone and 16 for social media. That’s a fantastic way to fight back against the peer pressure that makes you feel like your child is the only one without a phone.

But it begs the question. Is just saying ‘no’ and holding back really enough? Or should our main job be teaching our kids how to swim in these digital waters?

That question leads straight back to the classroom; to what we see every single day. Teachers need to talk. We really do. We need a place where we can be frank about what this tech explosion is doing inside the classroom and outside it. How do we even manage phones during school hours? What are the real-world disciplinary headaches? And bigger still, what about the quiet, psychological impact on our students?

In our big rush towards STEM, we’re worried something vital is getting shoved out of the way—the humanities. Before we hook everything up to AI, shouldn’t we have a firm grip on what it means to be human in the first place? And let’s not forget, not every kid has a laptop at home or fast internet. We could be making the gap between the haves and have-nots even wider if we aren’t careful. So, what's the long-term plan?

For starters, the national curriculum feels like it’s a decade behind. It needs to catch up to the world our children are actually living in. We also need to get students, teachers, and parents in a room together regularly, just to keep up with how fast things are changing. And we have to answer the million-dollar question: How do you grade a student’s work when an AI can write a perfect essay in 10 seconds? Beyond the school gates, it’s time to get tough. Social media companies need to be held legally responsible for protecting kids. It’s that simple. Features built to be addictive should be illegal.

Strong privacy settings shouldn’t be buried in a menu; they should be the default. Phone makers need to build in real age-checks and parental controls that actually work.

And then there’s us—the adults. We have to look at our own habits. Our kids are watching us scroll. They learn how to live with screens by seeing how we do it.

The situation is messy and complicated. But we can’t afford to just shrug our shoulders and say it’s too hard. Ignoring this isn’t an option anymore. If we’re going to protect our children and prepare them for the world that awaits, we have to act thoughtfully, and together. The alternative is a mess we’ll be cleaning up for years to come.