Starting next year, the NSW Government will cap how much time public school students spend on screens each day.
It comes after research showed NSW students are nearly twice as likely as their international counterparts to use screens for more than two hours a day.
Under the changes, screentime will be capped at fifteen minutes a day for kids in kindy to year 2, increasing with age.
Here's what you need to know.
Background
In 2023, the NSW Government banned mobile phones in public high schools, citing distraction and cyberbullying concerns.
Earlier this year, it also restricted the number of take-home assessments for HSC students due to concerns about AI use.
Now, it says its research shows less than half (45%) of secondary parents and one-third (32%) of primary parents think technology's benefits outweigh its downsides in schools.
Half of students surveyed for the Government's research said they are distracted by screens in class.
The research lines up with findings from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which tracks education outcomes from 38 nations.
It found that students in NSW are nearly twice as likely as the OECD average to use digital devices for learning for more than two hours a day.
New limits
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On Sunday, the NSW Government announced new screentime limits for all public schools, starting Term 1, 2027.
Between kindergarten and Year 2, students will only be allowed up to 15 minutes of personal device use a day.
On the older end, students in years 11 and 12 will be able to use devices up to half of the class time per subject.
Digital homework won't be recommended before Year 5, and schools will be encouraged to set aside at least an hour a day for handwriting and reading on paper.
Comments
Announcing the policy, NSW Education Minister Prue Car said: "We are seeing reading and writing skills going backwards for a whole generation of children, we have to act."
Shadow Education Minister Mark Speakman said he supports limits on screentime, but that the Government "needs to explain the evidence behind these rules and how schools will be supported to implement them, particularly in technology-based subjects and online exams."
What's next?
The changes won't need to pass NSW Parliament because they're part of a departmental policy for how public schools operate, not a new law.
The Department of Education has the power to set rules for public schools, not independent or Catholic schools.
Exemptions will apply for students with disability, additional needs, or those learning English as an additional language.
