Government to introduce amendment to schools Bill to make phone bans statutory

The Government will seek to make phone bans in schools statutory by introducing an amendment in the House of Lords to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said the amendment will make existing guidance on mobile phone bans in schools statutory.

A spokesperson for the DfE said: “We have been consistently clear that mobile phones have no place in schools, and the majority already prohibit them.

“This amendment makes existing guidance statutory, giving legal force to what schools are already doing in practice.

“It builds on the steps we’ve already taken to strengthen enforcement, with Ofsted considering schools’ mobile phone policies as part of inspection from this month.

“We will always put children’s interests first, including through this Bill – which is widely recognised as the biggest piece of child safeguarding legislation in decades, with critical measures like laws to crack down on profiteering in children’s social care and a new unique identifier to stop children falling through the cracks.”
MPs are to vote on the Government amendment on Wednesday, the Press Association understands.

Skills minister Baroness Smith of Malvern told the Lords: “We’ve listened to concerns about how we support headteachers in delivering on this policy and we have listened to Parliament.”
On Monday evening, peers voted through a Conservative amendment to the Bill on mobile phones.

They voted by 276 to 169, majority 107, to ban pupils from having smartphones during the school day.

Shadow education minister Baroness Barran’s proposal includes a potential carve-out for sixth formers, medical devices and some boarding school settings, and faces further scrutiny in the Commons, which has previously rejected it.

The Education Secretary has previously written to headteachers in England to stress that schools should be phone-free throughout the school day.

However, guidance on mobile phones has been non-statutory.

Headteachers’ union NAHT expressed its support for the ban to be made statutory.

General secretary Paul Whiteman said: “Statutory guidance will give school leaders the clarity they need to implement a ban, and will remove any ambiguity or differences between how schools approach smartphone policies.

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“Schools will only then need to decide how to implement and enforce a ban across their school community and the Government must provide any support they require to do so effectively.

“Some schools will need time to communicate with parents and pupils on implementation of a complete ban where this is not already in place.”
Teaching union NASUWT has previously announced its support for a statutory school phone ban.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said a statutory ban “doesn’t really change that much” as most schools already have bans.

“What would really be helpful is for the Government to make funding available to schools for the safe and secure storage of mobile phones, such as storage lockers or locked pouches,” he added.

“We would also like to see much tougher regulatory action taken to tackle the harm caused by social media and the excessive use of smartphones – which generally happens outside of school time and is clearly having a profound and damaging effect on many young people.”
A Government source said: “The repeated attempts by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to kill off some of the most far-reaching child protection legislation is an utterly abhorrent, and a dismal failure of some of the most vulnerable children in our country.

“After more than a decade where children’s social care and the system of child safeguarding was left to rot by these parties in office, and that saw horrific child abuse cases such as those of Arthur Labinjo Hughes, Star Hobson and Sara Sharif, this Government moved quickly to fix what was broken – only to be thwarted at every turn by opposition parties.

“The blocking of measures in this legislation, which includes direct manifesto commitments, such as the introduction of free breakfast clubs and limits to branded school uniform, saving families hundreds of pounds, by unelected Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers is a complete affront to democracy.”
Lady Barran told the Lords: “The current guidance that the Government has published, which it now proposes to put on a statutory footing, still allows schools to have a so-called ‘not seen, not heard’ policy.”
She added: “There is so much evidence that the presence of a smartphone in one’s bag or pocket is a distraction, that the temptation to turn it on when going to the lavatory, when out of sight, when in the playground, is almost irresistible.

Indeed, it happens to adults too.

“So, given that that is the case, putting flawed guidance on a statutory footing achieves nothing.”