I support heads who ban mobiles, says education minister
THE Education Secretary has thrown his weight behind mobile phone bans in schools over concerns children are being distracted and bullied.
Damian Hinds said he strongly supported all heads who outlaw phones because they ‘get in the way of education’ and a ‘healthy childhood’ is not about ‘looking at a screen’.
Mr Hinds said school should be a sanctuary from cyber bullies, online predators and ‘ body image’ issues caused by social media. And he said it was a ‘ worry’ that even some nursery- age children were ‘ having far too much screen time too early on’.
But Mr Hinds stopped short of saying he would impose a national blanket ban.
His comments at the conference of the Confederation of School Trusts follow complaints from teachers that mobiles are causing behaviour issues in schools. Ringtones have been going off in class, photos are being shared to bully pupils and at break times children have been staring at screens instead of talking to each other.
Mr Hinds said: ‘I don’t want kids in schools to be using their mobile phones. They get in the way of education, and actually having a zone in children’s lives where they are free of that technology is good for them.
‘I firmly believe they should just not be on their phones in school, and so I strongly support schools that ban phones.’
In September, the French government imposed a ban on mobiles for under-15s in schools, but Mr Hinds said he would not go this far out of respect for heads’ ‘autonomy’.
‘Head teachers know best how to run their schools and how to achieve the objectives they want without unintended consequences,’ he said. ‘You might have a particular reason why a particular child needs to have a mobile phone.
‘If you have a blanket ban, that gets in the way of head teachers making judgments.’
He said some schools were banning smartphones but allowing children to carry ‘oldfashioned brick phones’ on their commutes for safety reasons.
Mr Hinds said he had particular concerns about the ‘depiction of perfect lives’ and ‘body image’ on social media, which can make pupils feel bad about themselves. He is also worried about ‘safeguarding aspects’ to do with online predators posing as children, and the ‘complexities’ of online relationships.
A recent survey by the Department for Education found 95 per cent of schools already impose some kind of restriction on phone use during the school day, with a substantial number banning them from the school premises altogether.
The Government has given heads the power to confiscate phones where necessary and also to investigate cyber bullying that goes on beyond the school gates.
A 2015 study by the London School of Economics found that banning phones had the effect of giving pupils an extra week’s education over the course of an academic year. Researchers found that test scores increased by more than 6 per cent in those which banned phones.
‘Far too much screen time’