No serving teachers on DfE’s new education apps advisory panel

The Department for Education has named eight academics, consultants, tech company officials and charity workers who will form a panel on early years, language, literacy and communication apps. The panel will produce “tips and guidance” for parents on how to use apps to aid their children’s learning.Ministers’ plans to quality-mark education apps were first revealed by Schools Week earlier this month, prompting a cautious welcome from ed tech experts, but also a warning that the project would fail unless a panel of teachers was chosen to test the apps.But the government today revealed that not one of the panellists is a serving teacher, and only one is listed as having had teaching experience.The panel will be chaired by Jackie Marsh, professor of education at the University of Sheffield and a leading digital literacy campaigner. She will be joined by fellow academics Dr Rosie Flewitt from UCL and Sandra Mathers, a former primary school teacher who now works as a senior researcher at the University of Oxford.