PARENTS spending hundreds of pounds on high-tech educational toys for toddlers would be better off giving them an old mobile phone to play with, according to an education expert.

Lydia Plowman, Professor of Education at the University of Stirling, says parents should stop feeling pressurised into buying computerised toys for young children because they are no better than traditional methods of teaching children the basics.

Families eager to introduce their children to new technology should use lap-tops, mobile phones and other gadgets already in the home rather than splashing out on custom-built computers, she says.

“These toys are not particularly beneficial, although they are not particularly harmful either. There is no problem having them in the home. But in terms of literacy and numeracy they are certainly not more effective than more traditional methods of helping children to learn,” she said yesterday.

She has spent the past two years studying the impact of new technology on young children and announced the preliminary results of her study at a conference by the Family and Parenting Institute in London yesterday.

The best feature about these often pricey toys is that they can be used in role play, with children pretending to be in an office or ordering their shopping online, Professor Plowman believes.

Since they can do this just as well on the household computer parents could be saving a fortune, as long as they are prepared to put up with sticky fingers on the keyboard.

In particular, she recommends giving children old mobile phones to play with so they can pretend to call their friends. “Family members often change their phone every year and give their old one to their young child. That’s a very good way of introducing them to technology in an authentic setting,” she said.

Sales of educational electronic toys have soared as anxious attempt to keep their children ahead of the pack.

They rose by 48 per cent in 2004, whereas sales of traditional pre-school toys, such as building blocks, rose by just 1 per cent. The Toy Retailers Association has this year tipped the V.Smile Baby Infant Development System as a Christmas bestseller for pre-school children.

At £39.99 it claims to teach toddlers about numbers, shapes, colours and even sign language, linking a simple keyboard to a television via an infra-red connection.

Professor Plowman said that she was not anti-technology, and did not want to be associated with movements such as the Alliance for Childhood, which claims electronic toys inhibit free play and are responsible for low attainment at school.

On the contrary, she believes IT can be harnessed to increase imaginative play, but it does not have to cost the earth.

Computerised toys are the subject of an investigation by Baroness Greenfield, the neuroscientist, and three former education secretaries, who are exploring scientific research into the effects of electronic games on children. Baroness Greenfield has said society must do more to promote real play “as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment”.

• Parents who fail to read stories or sing nursery rhymes to their children are threatening the youngsters’ futures, Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, said yesterday at the launch of the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners. The academy would train teachers and social workers to ensure parents know the value of reading and singing to children, she said.

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