Schools will get new powers to ban mobile phones

Mobile phones will be banned in schools in England under guidance issued to head teachers today in an ­attempt to minimise disruption and ­improve behaviour in classrooms.

The nationwide rules will give ­backing to teachers in prohibiting the use of mobile phones throughout the school day, including at break times. Pupils who breach the ban face ­detention as well as having their ­phone confiscated for as long as the head teacher deems necessary.

The guidance also gives teachers the power to search rucksacks and the legal protection from being sued by parents for loss or damage to confiscated devices.

The rules, for primary and secondary schools, come days after an intervention by the mother of Brianna Ghey, who called for her daughter’s murder to be a “tipping point” in fixing “the mess” of the internet and social media.

Schools are offered four different policies to enforce the guidance, which is published nearly three years after ministers first promised a phone ban.

The most “straightforward” option is a total ban on phones on school grounds, with pupils told to leave ­them at home or with parents. This policy provides “a very simple boundary” that means pupils could be punished if a phone were found on school property.

A second option would require pupils to hand in their devices to school staff on arrival and collect them at the end of the school day. Lockers that cannot be accessed until the end of the school day have also been offered to allow children to store phones while in lessons.

A fourth, more liberal, policy would put trust in pupils by allowing them to keep hold of their phones but only on the “strict condition that they are never used, seen or heard”. Consequences for breaching this policy would need to be “sufficient to act as an effective ­deterrent”, the guidance states, and it is “important that schools enforce this policy vigorously, consistently and visibly”.

If this policy is adopted, schools must make clear that phones must be switched off and placed at the bottom of the school bag and that any breach would result in on-the-spot confiscation.

The school office should be the first port of call for parents when getting hold of their children during the school day. The Department for Education document states that confiscation can be an “effective deterrent” for individual pupils or as a “general deterrent for all pupils at the school”.

One in three secondary school pupils report that phones are used in most ­lessons without permission. The ­education department cited Ofcom figures that show that 97 per cent of children have their own phone by the age of 12. It also cited a call by Unesco, the UN’s ­education, science and culture arm, for phones to be banned from schools after evidence linking their use to lower ­educational performance.

Esther Ghey has called for a total ban on social media access for children under 16 and said her daughter Brianna had become vulnerable after spending too much time online, lacking real-life contact with friends. She believes that Brianna would be alive if her two killers had not had access to violent content on the internet.

The guidance is designed to ensure more consistency across all schools in England but the power to decide on a school’s phone policy will remain with the head teacher.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said that the guidance would give teachers the “tools to take action to help improve behaviour”, adding: “Schools are places for children to learn and mobile phones are, at a minimum, an unwanted distraction in the classroom.”

She said banning mobile phones will help children make friends, adding that the policy would “reset social norms” and allow teenagers to spend more time talking to each other. She told Times Radio that “children will have to socialise” when they can no longer spend breaks playing with their phones. “They will have to have those conversations as they have always had to.”

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Keegan told pupils: “Look up from the phone and talk to your classmates and start to build those vital relationships that take you all the way through your life. I met my best friend when I was ten — I may not have done that if I was sat there scrolling on my phone all day.”

However, teachers’ unions said that the crackdown was misguided because most schools already imposed a ban. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, branded the reform a “non-policy for a non-problem” and said ministers should focus on limiting children’s access to social media platforms.

He said: “Compulsive use of these ­devices is not something that is happening in schools, where robust policies are already in place, but while children are out of school. Most schools already forbid the use of mobile phones during the school day or allow their use only in limited and stipulated circumstances.

“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.”

Parents have also expressed concern that banning phones on school ­premises would put children’s safety in danger as they would not be able to call for help in an emergency on their way to and from school.