Why the school ‘phone ban’ is a gimmick

The government’s latest announcement on mobile phones in schools is an “eye-catching initiative” that will have little impact on what happens in classrooms.

Gillian Keegan became the latest education secretary to seize on the issue last autumn when she promised a crackdown on mobile phones in English schools during her party conference speech. Ministers have been making similar pledges for at least five years. It is an easy way to grab a headline without spending any money.

The reality is that the vast majority of schools already have strict rules on mobile phone use. A Teacher Tapp poll last month found that more than 80 per cent have either banned phones altogether, do not permit their use during the school day or only allow them when specifically permitted by a teacher.

Less than 1 per cent of schools have policies which allow students to use phones whenever they like. The new guidance from the Department for Education, which provides an optional list of ways to create a “mobile phone-free environment”, is not going to transform the way pupils learn or behave.

This is not to say that the dangers of the online world are not a genuine concern. Most parents worry about how to control their children’s screen time. Mobile phones can be distracting, which is why most schools have clear rules in place about when or if they can be used.

A ban on phones in schools will, however, do nothing to prevent children accessing violent or extreme content from home. Nor will it curb the cyber-bullies who follow pupils from the playground into their bedroom. The government must do more to tackle the tech companies that allow dangerous material onto their digital platforms.

Children need to learn how to safely navigate the online world. In Finland, all pupils have media literacy classes from the age of seven which teach them how to spot fake news and give them the tools to resist digital manipulation.

When more than a fifth of pupils are persistently absent from school, a third of young people fail their GCSEs, employers are crying out for a curriculum that gives children the skills they need for work and schools are struggling with a mental health crisis, there is an urgent need for education reform. A reannouncement about mobile phones is a gimmick that does not match the scale of the challenge.

Rachel Sylvester is chairwoman of The Times Education Commission