The average school bag now contains gadgets worth £130, with almost half of children taking at least one into the classroom, a survey has found.
More than one-quarter of parents plan to spend an average of £329 per family on gadgets for their children for the new school year, according to the poll by uSwitch.
Some 48 per cent of school children take a mobile phone to school - 26 per cent own smartphones and 22 per cent feature phones - and 8 per cent regularly take tablets.
But almost one in 10 children have had gadgets stolen at school and 14 per cent have been bullied, with 58 per cent of victims being taunted about their brands.
More children now do their homework on tablets (24 per cent) than desktop computers (20 per cent), although most (38 per cent) use laptops, and the majority of parents (80 per cent) say technology helps their child's education.
But 66 per cent of parents have concerns about their children's reliance on spell checkers, 61 per cent worry about technology's effect on handwriting and 60 per cent about its impact on mental arithmetic skills.
The study found that more than a quarter (27 per cent) of all work done in class and 33 per cent of homework is now typed rather than handwritten, while 25 per cent of schoolchildren now submit their homework by email or via an online system set up by their school.
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