Educational policy aims are very ambitious: from pre-school to lifelong learning they demand improvements in both quantity and quality, which are multiplicative in their effects on teaching workload. It is difficult, therefore, to achieve these aims effectively without rethinking our approach to teaching and learning. Our essentially nineteenth century model of educational institutions does not scale up to the requirements of a twenty-first century society. Despite their potential to contribute to a rethink, digital technologies have usually been used in a technology-driven way to upgrade our existing educational models. There is an alternative: an education-driven approach to the use of digital technologies to achieve our ambitions for education.