The government is set to make mobile phone bans in schools statutory, introducing an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in the House of Lords.
A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said the change will formalise existing guidance on phone restrictions within educational settings.
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.”
Peers will vote in the Lords on Monday evening on a Conservative amendment to the bill on mobile phones.
The education secretary has previously written to head teachers in England to stress that schools should be phone-free throughout the entire school day. However, guidance to schools on mobile phones has been non-statutory.
The teaching union NASUWT has previously announced its support for a statutory school phone ban.
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 [sic] 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.”
