THE restricted use of mobile phones in schools was debated by the House of Lords last week. The “issue ought to be straightforward”, the worldwide campaigner and crossbench peer Baroness Kidron said in her introduction. The devices risk detracting from the primary educational purposes of “learning, constructing relationships, personal development and acquiring skills resembling sports, debating, and drama”, she said.
Research from the think tank Policy Exchange this 12 months, she said, had “found that schools with an efficient ban on smartphones were greater than twice as prone to be rated outstanding by Ofsted”. It was “not simply about learning; [but] about constructing a respectful and communicative school community”, Baroness Kidron said. There were also health implications around eyesight, speech and language development, disturbed sleep patterns, and increased rates of hysteria.
In spite of latest legislative moves in Australia, she didn’t think that mobile phones ought to be banned completely in schools. Some pupils needed them for health and well-being reasons, and a few to support their learning difficulties. Also, some children were carers, or were vulnerable, and required immediate phone access. “Each of those is acknowledged in the federal government guidance, and every should form a part of phone restriction policies in schools.”
The Bishop of Oxford, Dr Steven Croft, set out how his diocese helps to teach greater than 60,000 children, through a network of 285 church schools and multi-academy trusts. He spoke of “a broad consensus on the importance of this issue and in favour of smartphone-free schools. However, there isn’t yet a final consensus on the following steps to be taken to bring this about.”
Speaking from recent experience, he said, one in all the faculties he had visited had enforced a ban on phones which had “translated into higher behaviour overall, less bullying, and better levels of concentration, that are in turn translating into more learning, higher relationships, healthier communities, and better attainment.”
A head teacher in one other school had told him in regards to the impact that phones now have on parents, from basic communication challenges to extensive WhatsApp message traffic, and poor levels of comprehension. “Addictive technology needs communities of resistance to be formed by schools and fogeys,” Dr Croft said. “The mental health and a spotlight span of our youngsters and the entire of our society are at stake.”
Lord Chartres, a former Bishop of London, introduced a biblical note: “Speaking on this subject after the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is quite like Ruth gleaning after a mix harvester. I agree with absolutely all the things she said in her masterful summary of the topic.”
His interest was in “individuals who have just left our schools”, and he quoted from the Office for National Statistics. “We are told that this 12 months there are 872,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 not in work, employment, or training. We are also told that a big a part of that has to do with technologies, and the kind of dangers and pressures described.”
He referred to it as “wake-up time for public authorities and fogeys to regain our courage after a period by which there was an awesome deal of hesitancy about positively teaching and reinforcing healthful ways of life as established truths, quite than as merely interesting topics for classroom discussion. There is a crisis of authority involved in what we now have been discussing.”
Although, he said, “we cannot uninvent social media; we must learn easy methods to live with it fruitfully.” He ended his remarks with a note of caution from the inquest into the death of the 14-year-old schoolgirl Molly Russell: “She ended her life while affected by depression and the negative effects of online contact.”
Responding for the Government at the top of the two-hour session, Baroness Anderson referred to it as “an education”, and thanked Lord Chartres for raising “the problem of addictive technology”, and with others for having “emphasised the role of young people’s voices on this debate, and the incontrovertible fact that they aren’t heard”.
The Take Note motion was approved.
