Phone ban will 'help children make friends and socialise', says education secretary

Unions warn that phone ban is a ‘non-policy for a non-problem
Anna Davis @_annadavis19 February 2024

The Education Secretary has insisted the government’s pledge to ban mobile phones from schools will be helpful to headteachers, despite most schools saying they already follow the policy.

Gillian Keegan claimed that about half of the 24,000 schools in England do not already restrict mobile phone use, but admitted that the data is “a little out of date.”

It comes after education app Teacher Tapp, which surveys thousands of teachers, found that less than one per cent of schools have policies that allow students to use phones whenever they like.

Headteacher Pepe Di’Iasio, incoming general secretary of the Association of Schools and College Leaders, said he does not know of any schools that have not already taken action on restricting phone use.

Ms Keegan insisted the new guidance, which is non-statutory, will change social norms and ensure all schools take a consistent approach to banning mobile phones.

Asked on the BBC Today programme how many schools she thinks do not already restrict mobile phone use in some way, she said: “The information we have got is a little out of date, but it’s about half last time we did a survey.

“About half of them did restrict and about half didn’t. It could be a few more that do now.”

She added that “quite a few” schools that ban phones do allow them to be used at breaktimes. She added: “What we want to see is consistency across the whole of the country that phones will not be used at all during the school day…so children can focus on socialising and building up those friendships and relationships that we all did in school and everybody else massively benefits from for the whole of their lives.”

She added that the government asked headteachers if the guidance on phones would be useful and they said “absolutely.”

But she admitted that banning smart phones for under 16s, which campaigners including the mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey are calling for, is “not something we have looked at or considered.”

The new guidance, published by the Department for Education, instructs headteachers on how to ban the use of phones not only during lessons but during break and lunch periods as well.

It also suggests that staff could search pupils and their bags for mobile phones if necessary, noting that ‘headteachers can and should identify mobile phones and similar devices as something that may be searched for in their school behaviour policy’.

In England it is currently up to individual heads to decide their own policies on mobile phones and whether they should be banned.

ASCL General Secretary Geoff Barton: “We have lost count of the number of times that ministers have now announced a crackdown on mobile phones in schools. It is a non-policy for a non-problem.

"The Government would be far better off putting its energies into bringing to heel the online platforms via which children are able to access disturbing and extreme content."

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