Illustrative image: Sweden is returning to pen and paper in classrooms amid concerns about the impact of too much screen time on learning, raising questions about the role of technology in education. Illustration: Magnific
After years as one of the earliest and most committed adopters of one-to-one digital learning, Sweden has begun moving back towards paper textbooks, handwriting and more restricted device use. Informed by data, the Swedish National Agency for Education’s proposed digitalisation strategy ran into sustained concern from researchers, neuroscientists and paediatricians during consultation.
The government’s own account of the shift, published in February 2024, describes a return to paper textbooks, restricted digital access for younger grades, and mobile phones banned from the start of the school day. The evidence behind the pivot concluded that heavy technology use had not improved outcomes, and it had disadvantaged already-struggling learners the most.
It is an uncomfortable development for those who have spent the past decade telling the rest of the world that the future of education is digital.
Screen-based teaching appeared to weaken concentration, reduce reading comprehension, and affect basic writing skills in younger children. Handwriting, unlike typing, engages motor, visual, memory and language systems simultaneously. Reading on digital devices made it harder for children to process information, with a growing body of evidence suggesting that reading and learning from paper encourages deeper comprehension and better retention, while screen reading produces more reading disruptions than paper-based reading. Excessive screen use raised broader concerns about learners’ brain development.
Sweden’s sudden change of tactic and the research raises an important question for South Africa. What should our relationship with technology in education actually be?
The answer is not to turn our backs on technology. Nor should we assume that putting a device in every child’s hands will somehow solve the problems of our education system.
South Africa participated in the last three Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2015, 2019 and 2023. In all three years, South Africa scored below the entry level for basic mathematical understanding, with a continued downward trend over the years.
TIMSS is set to evaluate Grade 4 learners. However, the South African learners were in Grade 5 to match curricula and maintain trend measurement. Despite this, South African learners still fared poorly.
This plays out with increasing numbers of learners opting for mathematics literacy. Grade 12 learners who wrote mathematics literacy increased by 55 325 between 2023 and 2025 while learners who wrote mathematics dropped by 7601 over the same period. This is while more than 450 schools don’t offer mathematics at all. This is not an issue that technology will fix.
The lesson from Sweden is not that technology has failed. It is that technology is not education. The policy change was influenced by research data from the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
South Africa has particular reason to pay attention to that distinction. Our challenges are considerably more fundamental than whether a learner has access to a tablet.
We need to improve foundational literacy and numeracy, strengthen teaching, close learning gaps early, and give teachers the tools and support they need to work effectively in overcrowded classrooms. Mathematics carries particular weight here. It is a foundation for further learning and, increasingly, for participation in a digital economy, yet South African children continue to struggle with basic mathematics, with consequences that extend well beyond the classroom into low tertiary science enrolments and constrained economic opportunity. Technology can help with that. But only if we are clear about what problem it is actually solving.
Across Africa, there has been some genuinely exciting innovation in digital education. Platforms such as Eneza Education, M-Shule and Rori by Rising Academies have shown how technology can be adapted to African circumstances, operating in low-bandwidth environments where connectivity and infrastructure cannot be taken for granted, reaching millions of learners on simple feature phones from foundation phase through to early adulthood. The content is modular, age-appropriate, structured and aligned to a clear curriculum, all the while being taught in their home language.
South Africa needs to incorporate technology into rural and peri-urban classrooms, while recognising that teachers need to remain actively and centrally involved. The digital solutions need to be designed to complement classroom teaching rather than replace it. The most successful digital interventions do not ask how more technology can be put into the classroom. They ask where technology can make learning better.
This is done by having paper workbooks alongside age-appropriate mobile maths applications, teacher training in modern pedagogy, and monitoring tools that let educators see where a learner is struggling before it compounds into a lost school year. Local large language AI models are used for differentiated learner support, digital marking and classroom needs analysis. Mobile monitoring platforms track programme outcomes for teachers, districts and funders in real time rather than after the fact. External evaluations of this model continue to show a statistically significant impact on learning outcomes.
But it does not replace the workbook or the teacher. And it does not assume every child should spend the same amount of time looking at a screen. The youngest learners may not use mobile devices at all. Older learners use them more extensively, but still alongside pen, paper and direct engagement with their teachers, with technology there to accelerate the feedback loop and free teachers from paper-based administration.
Five fairly simple principles should be considered.
- Technology should serve a learning objective, not become the learning objective. A device is a tool. Its presence in a classroom tells us very little about whether children are learning.
- Age matters. Early learning depends heavily on interaction, language, physical engagement and the development of foundational cognitive skills without technology.
- Teachers remain central. The most effective technology supports teachers with better information, useful resources and reduced administration. It should strengthen the relationship between teacher and learner, not attempt to remove it.
- Context matters. A sophisticated digital platform designed for a well-connected school with reliable electricity, trained teachers and individual devices may be inappropriate for an overcrowded classroom where infrastructure is unreliable and learners have very different levels of access and understanding. Devices without maintained infrastructure become liabilities, not assets, and are quickly lost to distraction or misuse.
- Finally, we should judge technology by outcomes, not excitement. The education sector has been through its own version of the technology hype cycle. Understandably, there is excitement now about artificial intelligence, personalised learning, automated marking and increasingly sophisticated digital tools. Some will transform education. Some will not.
Technology should help us understand why a learner is struggling, not simply give them more of the same exercises. AI can provide differentiated support, while digital tools can identify gaps in understanding and give learners immediate feedback. Data can also help teachers and education managers see where intervention is needed.
South Africa, therefore, has an opportunity to learn from both the successes and the mistakes of other countries. We should not simply follow Sweden backwards, any more than we should follow the technology industry forward without question.
- Stephen Mahony is founder and CEO of the JumpStart Foundation, which works in partnerships to build solutions around Maths education and development.
