I’ve just returned from Parents International’s Parent Summit 2026, held on 23–24 October in Astana, Kazakhstan. It was an extraordinary experience, much like the 2024 Parent Summit in Georgia. This time, however, something felt different. The theme, Repairing Broken Education Ecosystems Together, could hardly have been more timely or relevant to someone like me, still navigating the joys and challenges of raising a family. It also provided a welcome opportunity to reflect on how much my perspective on parenting has changed over the years, particularly when it comes to technology, social media, and the relationship between families and schools.
I’m not ashamed to recognise that I used to be the sort of parent who tried to keep interactions with the school to a minimum. Not out of indifference, but simply because it meant having one less thing to worry about. The problem with that approach is that it is a temporary patch, not a long-term solution. In my case, my children were born quite a few years apart, which means there has never really been a break from interacting with schools and teachers.
Travelling for work across Europe, Africa, and Asia, and spending time with parents, teachers, and school leaders, has been a wake-up call. Literally everywhere I’ve been, I’ve met people doing their best to improve the quality and accessibility of education in their own context. And while schools and professional educators undoubtedly have essential roles to play, the notion that parents are the primary educators of their children has increasingly struck a chord with me.
I realised that, while I wasn’t doing badly as a parent, I could do better.
Learning to be present
Becoming more engaged in my children’s day-to-day experiences at school has made a significant difference to our family. Being engaged doesn’t mean solving my children’s problems for them. It means showing them that I care about what happens in their lives, that I’m paying attention, and that I’m there when they need help.
Being part of an interethnic, interfaith, and intercultural family brings a host of advantages, but it also comes with challenges. For example, every once in a while, we have to discuss remarks about my children’s nationality or the shape of their eyes. Sometimes, it’s something deeper and more unsettling. And while I know full well that it is neither my responsibility nor within my power to prevent my children from experiencing suffering, it’s important for them to know that their parents are there for them.
There is, however, a flipside to that coin.
Being more engaged and paying closer attention also means that I’ve come to notice things I might previously have overlooked. I find myself questioning practices and decisions that I would once have brushed aside. And this, unfortunately, is where the breakdown of our education ecosystems becomes apparent.
When rules replace dialogue
I live in what might best be described as a small village in the countryside. At the beginning of each school year, children receive a compulsory school diary, purchased through what is described as a “mandatory voluntary contribution” — a rather peculiar expression in itself. The opening pages contain the Patto educativo di corresponsabilità, the educational co-responsibility agreement between the school and families. Its content varies from school to school, but in our case, considerable space is dedicated to listing rules, sanctions, and punishments, while remarkably little is devoted to establishing opportunities for meaningful family engagement beyond the usual annual meetings.
I have nothing against rules, but they are not a substitute for dialogue, and signing an agreement is not the same thing as participating in an educational partnership.
Perhaps the most revealing example came this year, when the school introduced a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) regulation. Digital technology is already deeply embedded in everyday school life. Classrooms have interactive whiteboards, children are assigned videos to watch at home, and QR codes provide access to external resources. The latter can present considerable difficulties for children who do not have a mobile phone or who complete their homework without an adult nearby.
In principle, I can understand the rationale behind BYOD. Used appropriately, personal digital devices can support learning, help children develop digital literacy, and provide opportunities for education aimed at preventing bullying and cyberbullying. These are precisely the kinds of challenges we have addressed at Parents International through projects such as DRONE and PARTICIPATE.
But there are problems with the regulation in question, and some of them are serious.
The first concerns photographs and videos. According to the text printed in the school diary, “pictures and videos that respect the people portrayed are allowed”. What does that mean, exactly? Children have not been given a meaningful explanation of the implications of photographing or recording other people, particularly other minors. They have not been adequately introduced to questions of informed consent, the identification of individuals, the risks of sharing images, or the fact that consent, where it provides the legal basis for processing personal data, can be withdrawn. Nor have they been taught how difficult it may be to regain control of an image once it has been distributed.
These are not minor details. They are fundamental elements of digital citizenship.
The second problem is considerably more serious, because it concerns a provision that is unlawful. The regulation explicitly states that, if electronic devices are used during a lesson, the teacher may confiscate a student’s device and inspect its browsing history and stored contents to determine whether it has been used for activities unrelated to the lesson.
Teachers have no legal authority to inspect the private contents of a student’s personal device.
This is not a matter of interpretation or pedagogical discretion. Under Italian law, searches of digital devices are subject to specific legal safeguards. Formal searches in criminal investigations ordinarily require a reasoned judicial order and are conducted by the competent authorities, with narrowly defined exceptions provided by law. These are not powers that teachers possess, or that a school can grant them through its internal regulations.
A smartphone is not simply a classroom accessory. It may contain private conversations, family photographs, personal correspondence, and highly sensitive information, including details concerning someone’s health. Allowing a teacher to search the memory of a device would constitute an unlawful intrusion into its owner’s privacy, potentially exposing personal and sensitive data belonging not only to the child but also to other people.
The issue is not about questioning teachers’ intentions, but rather recognising that children have rights, and that those rights do not disappear when they enter a classroom.
Yet the most revealing aspect of the entire affair was something else.
No family engagement
Families had not been invited to participate in the drafting of the regulation, or even just to discuss it. Many parents only became aware of its implications when the subject was raised during an informal meeting we held before selecting the class representatives.
When I raised the issues, several of my peers were genuinely surprised. Some had signed the regulation without reading it. Others were unfamiliar with the GDPR and the protections it provides.
To me, this episode illustrates how easily a supposed partnership can become a formality: the school establishes the rules, parents sign them, and everybody carries on until something goes wrong.
And perhaps most importantly, while the regulation describes what children may or may not do with digital devices, it makes no meaningful provision for teaching them how to use those devices responsibly.
Digital literacy cannot be reduced to prohibition
There is mounting evidence that measures such as blanket mobile-phone bans in schools and age-based social-media bans fail to deliver the improvements they promise.
Research has repeatedly questioned their effectiveness in improving educational outcomes, mental wellbeing, and online safety. Restricting access to a device may prevent its use for a few hours, but it neither guarantees a reduction in overall screen time nor addresses problematic behaviour. Crucially, it does not equip children with the skills they need to navigate digital environments safely.
Social-media bans face an additional problem: enforcement. Restricting access is not the same thing as preventing it. Some children find ways around these restrictions by themselves; in other cases, their parents even help them. The former may leave children navigating digital spaces without adequate guidance or support, while the latter raises uncomfortable questions about the effectiveness of prohibitions that families themselves circumvent.
Above all, prohibition is not education.
It’s not possible to teach children to recognise misinformation, protect their privacy, understand consent, or respond to cyberbullying simply by preventing them from accessing the environments in which these challenges arise. These are skills that must be taught, practised, and reinforced. And this requires the active participation of both schools and families.
I am old enough to remember when everybody was talking about a “paradigm shift”. To me, the need to educate children and engage their families rather than rely on prohibitions is not so much a paradigm shift as plain common sense.
On the one hand, I understand the difficulties professional educators face. Their challenges are numerous, pressing, and very real. There is no way to return education to what it used to be, because the world in which that education existed is gone. The children sitting in today’s classrooms are growing up in a reality fundamentally different from the one their parents and teachers remember. Expecting schools to deal with these transformations alone is neither reasonable nor fair.
At the same time, I find myself increasingly troubled by parental disengagement, perhaps precisely because I recognise my former self in it. Parenting is demanding. Families are under pressure, time is limited, and the sheer quantity of information we are expected to process can be overwhelming. But we are not required to be perfect parents, or experts in every field. We are required to fulfil our responsibilities as our children’s primary educators, to the best of our abilities.
That includes trying to understand the changes and innovations shaping their lives, even when we do not necessarily agree with them.
In my family, we have a simple principle: you don’t get what you want simply because you want it. You get what you need when you need it.
This applies to mobile phones, too.
Over time, however, we have made the decision to stop relying on parental-control apps. Such tools can have practical advantages, especially with younger children, but intrusive monitoring can also interfere with children’s developing autonomy and their right to privacy. Moreover, monitoring does nothing, in itself, to develop their digital literacy skills.
I now prefer to teach my children how to use a mobile phone safely and responsibly, step by step, with guidance appropriate to their age and maturity. It requires patience, attention, and a willingness to have conversations that are sometimes delicate, but it does pay off.
Repairing broken education ecosystems, together
Looking back at the Parent Summit in Astana, I find myself returning to its central message. An education ecosystem is not simply a school, a curriculum, or a collection of regulations. It is a network of relationships, responsibilities, and mutual expectations.
When schools make decisions without engaging families, when parents withdraw from those decisions because they are too busy, too tired, or simply assume that someone else knows better, and when children are expected to navigate an increasingly complex world without being given the knowledge and skills to understand it, something breaks.
Repairing these relationships does not mean eliminating rules or denying the expertise of professional educators. Nor does it mean that parents should dictate every pedagogical decision in school. It means recognising that education is a shared responsibility, and that the roles of those involved are different.
Schools genuinely engaging families in the conversation, parents making the effort to participate in earnest, and children being treated not merely as subjects of regulations but as individuals whose rights, responsibilities, and capacities are still developing: none of this is unrealistic. It may be difficult and challenging, but it is not only possible: it’s the reality we need to build.
Emanuele Bertolani
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