Monday Briefing: What It Takes to Revive Struggling Education System

RIYADH, 13 OCTOBER 2026 —

Good morning. I’m back, but don’t get too excited. I’ll just be making guest appearances here and there. Now, on to children, who – if the steady stream of warnings is anything to go by – are in serious trouble. There’s the pull of addictive screens, a sharp drop in children reading for pleasure, a global decline in academic performance, and a notable rise in youth mental health struggles.

In the UK, phones are already banned during the school day, and from spring of next year, under-16s will not be able to access major social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram. But are we focusing on the wrong thing?

Today, I speak to Jenny Anderson , award-winning journalist and author of The Disengaged Teen, about why so many young people are disengaging from learning, and what it might take to turn that around. That’s after the headlines. Ukraine | Donald Trump has announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, apparently without consulting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said the deal to stop long-range attacks was “news to me”.

Middle East | A projectile hit a passenger terminal at the airport in Riyadh on Sunday, the day after a deadly missile attack on the facility carried out by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel group killed 13 people. UK politics | Andy Burnham is facing questions over plans to speed up sweeping changes to Britain’s electoral system amid speculation that some of his closest advisers are pressing for an early general election.

Djibouti | At least 139 people, including 15 children, have died after a boat carrying 305 migrants capsized off the coast of Djibouti , the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Brexit | Andy Burnham has said it is clear Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum, after seeking answers on the Kremlin’s involvement in the 2016 vote when he entered Downing Street. There is a real and growing crisis in young people’s engagement with learning.

According to recent research , fewer pupils now say they find school engaging. In 2020-21, 42% of students said they found what they learned interesting either “always/very often” or “quite often”. By 2023, that figure had fallen to just 28%. Nearly half of pupils do not take part in extracurricular activities, while severe absence – defined as missing more than 50% of school sessions – are on the rise in England.

Pupils are also becoming less happy at school. The share of pupils who say they are happy at school dropped from 65% in 2020-2021 to 50% in 2023-2024. Perhaps most strikingly, survey data suggests pupils feel worse, physically and mentally, than they did during the Covid-19 pandemic. Jenny Anderson argues this points to something more complex than distraction from phones: a fundamental problem in how our schools are designed.

“We’re shuffling kids through a system, which they tell us feels like prison,” Anderson explains, adding that young people are “bored to tears by content that feels irrelevant to them”. The consequences of disengagement can extend beyond the classroom. “If they can’t figure themselves out as learners, they often can’t figure themselves out as people.

They often don’t feel they belong.” Much of the debate has centred on the addictive nature of smartphones, particularly the social media platforms that dominate them. In March, a US court found Meta and Google’s YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products used by millions of young people. A flurry of lawsuits against Meta followed, including one starting later this month in Los Angeles, around alleged social media addiction in young users.

In August, as part of a landmark $18bn settlement , the company agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, such as a daily usage limit of two hours and blocking social media use at night. “Phones have done tremendous damage,” Anderson says.

“They are very risky to kids because they are clearly created with pathologically addictive algorithms.” Anderson argues that these algorithms displace the experiences kids need to build a sense of identity and purpose: time with friends, developing interests, and getting involved in their communities. The platforms are also built around “weaponised engagement”, Anderson adds, putting them in direct competition with the slower and more difficult work of learning.

But while she welcomes the effort to rein in the damage caused by phones, she warns against treating phones as the sole issue in this education crisis. Anderson describes technology as an “exacerbator” – one which accelerates the disengagement that is already present in schools, rather than causing it in the first place. Phones offer an easy, addictive alternative to the hard work of learning, but simply taking devices away does not automatically re-engage students.

“Focusing only on phones and tech misses the whole story. It distracts us from the conversation about what schools need to fix.” Anderson’s book investigates why so many young people dislike school, and what can be done about it. She identifies four modes in which students approach their education: Passenger : Students who are coasting along and doing the bare minimum. This is about 50% of students. Resister : Students who withdraw or act out.

These are learners dubbed the “problem children”, but they are actually just children struggling with problems. Achiever : Students who aim to get gold stars in everything without knowing why. They have the highest rate of mental health challenges of all the modes. Explorer : Students who are curious, self-aware and driven. They have agency: the ability to set a goal, and the skills and will to go after it.

While achievers may appear to represent the pinnacle of academic performance, Anderson argues that it’s actually the explorer mode. These dynamic modes aren’t fixed, Anderson argues.

Related: Jenny Anderson