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More than a quarter (26 per cent) of parents plan to treat their kids to new gadgets ahead of the autumn term, spending an average £329 per family.
A survey of 1,000 UK parents with children aged 17 and under, conducted online via One Poll for uSwitch.com in August, also found that parents are set to spend £659 million on technology for their kids ahead of the back to school period this year.
Findings also reveal that the average school satchel now contains £130 worth of gadgets, and that half of children (49 per cent) take at least one gadget to school.
48 per cent of UK school children now take mobile phones to school – 26 per cent own smartphones themselves, while 22 per cent own feature phones and almost one in 10 (eight per cent) carry tablets to school on a regular basis.
However, nine per cent of children have had gadgets stolen at school, while 14 per cent have been victims of bullying over technology. Of these, more than half (58 per cent) were subjected to taunts about the brand of gadgets they were using.
More than a quarter (27 per cent) of all lesson work and a third of homework is now being typed rather than handwritten, while a quarter of school children now submit their homework by email or via an online system set up by their schools.
Interestingly, more kids now do their homework on tablets (24 per cent) than desktop computers (20 per cent). Another 11 per cent use smartphones, although the majority (38 per cent) use laptops, as revealed by AMD recently.
While 80 per cent of parents say technology gives their kids an educational advantage, more than 60 per cent are worried about their kids’ reliance on spellcheck, its effect on their handwriting and its impact on their mental arithmetic skills.
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