Will the Next Education Secretary Please Ban Fidget Toys From Classrooms

You may have missed the recent news that Zoe Ball’s daughter has, like her brother, and indeed Zoe herself, been diagnosed with ADHD. One of the strategies that Zoe Ball’s daughter will be given by ADHD ‘specialists’ is a range of fidget toys to help manage her condition. Up and down the country, in classrooms and homes, children who fidget are encouraged to do so with the support of fidget toys. These come in all sorts of forms: metal fidget spinners, foam squishes, rubbery stretchy worms, pretty silver rings and dog chew items that are worn round children’s necks. All of them must go.

The thinking behind fidget toys is that children with ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder and other neurodevelopment issues are unable to contain the energy generated by their bodies. They resort to leg joggling, finger tapping or body motions to expel this excess energy. Sometimes such people insist that these actions aid their concentration. In 2017 fidget spinners, the tri-pronged metallic device that spins at the flick of a finger went rival, and the market for external fidget toys burst onto the scene. Such devices were rapidly adopted and found themselves enthusiastically embraced by the Special Educational Needs establishment.

The company I work for employed by a local council has its own branded fidget spinners that are given to all new pupils. If we drive pupils, we are given a box of fidget toys for the teenagers to fiddle with in the car. It is beyond irritating. Gone are the days when children were taught to sit quietly with their hands on their laps.

It is now standard practice in primary schools for children who find it difficult to sit still to be given fidget toys to occupy themselves. At a recent school play I counted four young children who were sitting at the side of the main cohort of children, next to Teaching Assistants. Rather than learning how to sit still and concentrate on the play, the children were instead entirely absorbed in the fidget toys that the TAs had brought with them. One was fiddling with a stretchy centipede, another with a concertina snake, the third with a Rubik’s cube and the fourth with a family of squishies. It didn’t need a scientific study to work out that such toys are entirely distracting rather than useful concentration aids. Yes there are questions to be asked about the wisdom of making four and five year-olds sit still for long stretches of time, but to encourage their fiddling and inability to concentrate is another story entirely. Not least because the evidence for any benefits of fidget toys is thin at best and non-existent at worst. There is in fact more weighty evidence that the use of fidget toys deleteriously harms children’s ability to concentrate. Certain studies show a robust negative effect on academic performance and impaired memory retention. This should surprise no-one. Concentration is a learned skill that children need to be taught and that develops over time. Telling a child that this is something he or she can avoid and play instead with a spinny toy is entirely unhelpful.

The former Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman called out such nonsense way back in 2018 but was entirely ignored. At a press conference to launch her second annual report she said:

Some policymakers and practitioners are constantly looking for the next magic potion that will infallibly raise standards. Indeed, despite the history of snake oil, white elephants and fashionable gimmicks that have in the main been debunked, there remains a curious optimism that the elixir of education is just around the corner. But the truth is, we don’t need an elixir to help raise standards, because we already have the tried and tested ingredients we need. … Instead, to put all children on the path to success, the most important thing is to get the basics right, which begins with early literacy.

I once talked to a publisher of a large stable of national magazines. He said the ones that made him the most money were those women’s magazines that month in, month out, featured a big chocolate cake on the front over and coverlines all about diets. Like this industry, the fidget toy industry is a self-perpetuating racket. Distract children with inappropriate toys at school, continue the lie that there is something neurologically wrong with them, encourage them to invest in distracting fidget toys. While these toys are generally cheap, there is serious money to be made by volume sold. Indeed, Fortune Business Insights estimates that Britain is a leading European territory for fidget toys with the industry being worth around £215,000,000. Rather ominously it suggests that a portion of this rise comes from ‘kidult’ adoption of fidget toys. No doubt readers will work in offices where junior members of staff will infuriate everyone else by using fidget toys in meetings.

Who better to turn to for common sense advice about dealing with fidgets than Samuel Johnson? Doctor Johnson was a famous ‘joggler’ who bounded about the place with jerking body movements and unusual physical ticks. When once asked by the young niece of poet Christopher Smart what was the matter with him, he replied: “Bad habits.”

Let us throw out the fidget toys and be unafraid to teach our children good habits.

Mary Gilleece is an education support worker and her name is a pseudonym.