NSW Announces New School Screen-Time Limits: Why School Libraries Matter More Now Than Ever

The NSW Government has announced screen-use limits for public schools, with recommendations introduced from Term 1, 2027 and mandatory implementation from 2028. Alongside the limits, it recommends at least an hour a day of learning with pen and paper. (NSW Government announcement)

First, this is not a blanket ban on educational video

The distinction matters. NSW's recommended time limits apply to individual student devices, averaged over a week, while broader principles also cover televisions and interactive whiteboards. (NSW screen-use guidelines)

The department's principles say screens should be used where they are better for learning than the alternative, and interactive whiteboards should be used for teacher-led instruction. It also retains exemptions for reasonable adjustments, translation, distance education and other specified needs. (NSW screen-use guidelines)

That means being honest about alternatives. Swapping a video on a student's laptop for an online game or an online article does not, by itself, create screen-free learning.

The question is not simply which digital resource replaces another. It is what the lesson needs, which medium serves it best, and what happens next.

The research on reading media reinforces the need for care rather than slogans: a meta-analysis of 33 studies found a small overall advantage for paper, with differences associated with informational texts rather than narrative texts. We should not turn that nuanced finding into an argument that all digital reading is bad.

The ripple effect lands on people and resources

A direction set from above has to become a workable lesson below. If a teacher reduces device-based work, someone still has to find suitable texts, assemble resources, check reading demands and make them available to a class.

That work needs to be planned and resourced, not quietly added to an already full day. Nor should the alternative be a last-minute pile of worksheets that technically reduces screen time without making learning more engaging.

Research with teacher librarians across 30 Western Australian schools identified limited time, competing demands, crowded curricula, space and constrained budgets among the barriers to supporting literacy and literature learning. (Merga's research in Literacy) These were qualitative findings about staff experience, not a national staffing census, but they make the implementation challenge concrete. (Study methods)

Schools should not be asked to rely more heavily on physical resources while the people who select, organise and connect those resources to learning remain an afterthought. School libraries should be part of the transition plan from the beginning.

Access to books is an equity issue

“Read something instead” assumes there is something suitable within reach. We cannot build a school-wide response around that assumption.

That is a strong reason to treat the school library as shared educational provision, not an optional extra. For a child without a ready supply of appealing books at home, access at school matters beyond the next library lesson.

Well-funded collections, practical borrowing arrangements and time to choose and read need to sit beside the new screen-use expectations. Reducing access to one medium is not the same as improving access to another.

Having books is not the same as knowing what to read

A catalogue can contain thousands of titles and still leave a child thinking, “There is nothing here for me.” Finding an appealing book is a task of its own.

A small qualitative study published in 2024, involving 32 children in two East London primary schools, found that previous experiences, personal interests and seeing aspects of themselves in books were prominent influences on their choices. (Reedy and Reedy, Literacy) We should take that as a reason to listen to individual readers, not as a universal formula for choosing on their behalf.

There is also experimental evidence for the value of individual guidance: in a Dutch primary-school study with 99 students, regular librarian conversations and personalised book suggestions reduced the decline in reading attitude compared with independent selection alone. The wider research reported mixed results, including no overall reading-comprehension benefit in that primary study, so it does not justify promising the same outcome for every reader. (Van der Sande and colleagues)

This is why teacher librarians and library staff are so paramount. They read the books, know the kids and have the conversations that make a recommendation more useful than a popularity ranking.

The book a child disliked matters as well as the one they loved. So does the difference between wanting information about dinosaurs and wanting a funny adventure with a dinosaur in it.

Fund the alternative, not just the instruction

School leaders need to include the library in the implementation plan now. Ask what the change will require before expecting staff to absorb it:

• Collection funding: Are there enough appealing, current and curriculum-relevant print resources, including the copies needed for planned class use?
• Staffing and planning time: Who will select resources, support teachers and help individual children choose? Protect time for that work.
• Access and inclusion: Can students borrow the books they need, and are appropriate formats and accessibility supports available?
• Purposeful discovery: Can a student find a useful starting point quickly, then move from the catalogue to the collection?

The measures of success should extend beyond minutes avoided on a screen. We should also ask whether students can find books they want to read, whether teachers have suitable alternatives, and whether library staff have the resources to support both.

So what is FSI doing about it?

The documentary can lead straight to the book

When someone watches a documentary in TV4Education, the intelligence in our system automatically surfaces related books from their school's library collection. The connection works in reverse too: a book can lead them to related video.

These are books in their own library collection, not a generic list disconnected from what the school owns. The screen can spark an interest, and the system can put a relevant next read in front of someone who did not even know to look for it.

For example, a documentary about the ocean might prompt a student to explore marine life in a library book. A book might raise a question that a carefully chosen documentary helps a teacher explain.

We did not build that connection in response to this announcement. From the beginning, the aim has been to help an interest go somewhere meaningful, including away from the screen and into a book.

Help them find what they did not know to look for

As software designers, we should not require a child to arrive with the perfect search term. We should help surface possibilities they did not know existed and would not have thought to ask for.

That is different from deciding, invisibly, what a child “needs”. Good discovery opens a door and gives the reader a choice; it does not trap them inside a profile or keep serving more of the same.

A student might arrive interested in football and notice an unfamiliar story about belonging. Another might recognise a topic from a lesson and find a book they would never have searched for by title.

Those are the moments we want to design for. Not more time on the screen, but a useful connection that leads somewhere beyond it.

For us, the design test is therefore purposeful use. Does the experience make a relevant resource easier to find, leave room for curiosity, and let the student move on when the job is done?

Human curation, personal relevance and a clear way to the shelf

This is where our team of curators and our software design need to work together. We want an engaging discovery experience without asking each school's library staff to build every theme, collection and recommendation from scratch.

SmartSuite Library Discovery presents themed reading ribbons, event tiles and genre pathways using the school's own books. Library staff can also add their own curated collections and learning pathways. (Discovery features)

For students who need help getting started, SmartSearch provides matching suggestions as they type, picture-led Help Me Find pathways and spelling suggestions based on the catalogue. The purpose is to remove search obstacles, not create another activity that keeps the child on a device.

The student portal and Virtual Librarian also provide personalised recommendations informed by activity within the system and wider reading insights. From the personal page to the wider discovery experience, our design goal is relevance: making room for interests, likes, dislikes and the possibility of something unexpected.

Those are tools in support of a reading culture, not evidence that software alone changes screen habits. The desired outcome is a child finding the right book at the right time, with library staff available when a recommendation needs a human conversation.

When the screen turns off

School libraries have not suddenly become valuable because a screen-time policy has arrived. The policy should make their existing value harder to overlook.