Schools: Mobile Phones

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I join the queue of noble Lords thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, not just for securing the debate today but for all her work in this area. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, for her speech and particularly for her courage and integrity in leading her review. I also thank all the organisations that shared their expertise and insight ahead of this debate, particularly those representing parents, including Parentkind and Smartphone Free Childhood, as well as the work of the Children’s Commissioner, in making sure that the voice of children is never absent.

I start where the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, started when she said that this should be straightforward. I could not agree more. It is frustrating that this is not more straightforward. Listening to the debate this afternoon, what came through very strongly was an overwhelming sense that phones are part of a much wider problem with social media and the enforcement of restrictions on its use for children, and the addictive nature of social media apps, as we heard explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and my noble friend Lady Owen.

With very few exceptions, we heard that phones have no place in school, with medical conditions being an obvious exception that requires particular care. We also heard that we do not really understand their impact; that was even without AI. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, rightly raised what phones will look like in a matter of months with the inclusion of powerful AI, which will take us to another level of lack of understanding. That points us to a position where we should default to a safety-first approach in relation to children.

Even if we do not fully understand their impact, all the early indications point in the same direction. We heard this afternoon of the significant impact on mental health, sometimes with the most tragic consequences imaginable, but also, in a more universal sense, on the ability of children to concentrate. We heard—and many of us have read—that this is about not just the child who uses a phone in class, but the impact on other pupils in class and even the impact when the phone is turned off but sitting on their desk.

I had not thought about this ahead of the debate but my noble friend Lord Effingham is absolutely right: it is not just a daytime problem. It is even a night-time problem with children being interrupted by notifications. We know that that increased cognitive load and distraction impacts on attainment and we understand that that is greatest for low-attaining and low-income children—exactly the children whom we need to encourage and support, by taking barriers away from their achievement and learning.

I talked to a couple of head teachers ahead of the debate and got two contrasting reflections. One was exactly the same as the one the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford got, which was the immediate alleviation of bullying when phones were removed from a school. It is not just bullying within the school but the ability to use the phone to spread that bullying online by filming it. The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, was of course right to mention the rising issue of fraud and how phones are used to defraud children. But on a happier note, I also heard from a head teacher who felt that they had been able to expand their curriculum, because by banning phones in school it freed up so much time that they could pack more into the school day. Maybe that will be something for the Government to consider.

Phones also cut across the lines of communication between schools and parents, encouraging children to communicate directly with their parents rather than through the school. Like my noble friend Lady Jenkin, I benefited from the excellent presentation by the group Health Professionals for Safer Screens that set out its concerns about the impact of screens. Although some argue for educational benefits—we heard tentative pointers in that direction in this debate—we can ask: why can a desktop or laptop not perform the same educational function? I was very drawn to the A5 diary mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. Of course, we should also consider the use of AI on phones for plagiarism and the impact of that on the integrity of schoolwork.

We find ourselves in a situation where, according to the excellent report prepared by Policy Exchange earlier this year, only 11% of schools have truly effective policies to ban phones. Certainly, when I visited schools each week, pupils would tell me how relieved they were about putting their phones in a locker or in one of the pouches to which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred. Teachers would tell me how much difference it made to behaviour and concentration, and I had not even thought of the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, about a cashless and phoneless child being less vulnerable to being mugged, but that is obviously incredibly important. I also suggest that the removal of phones can help improve attendance because of the calmness in the classroom and—perhaps this is overly optimistic—I think we can all hope that better behaviour will improve teacher retention, which is so important.

I note that the Children’s Commissioner is undertaking a survey of every school in the country—I thank her for her work in this area—including in relation to the draft children’s online code. In her survey, she goes into detail about a school’s mobile phone policy. I think this will be a source of extremely useful insight for the Government. In that survey, which schools are legally required to complete, she also asks about safeguarding incidents and where they occurred, including specifically asking whether they occurred online, which I think will be very helpful.

I shall close by asking the Minister the following questions. If she does not have the answers today, perhaps she will be good enough to write. What assessment has the department made of the impact of the guidance that was produced for schools earlier this year? Does she think that there are areas that need tightening up? I re-read it—and, obviously, I take my collective responsibility for what is in it—but there is an option “d” in the guidance, which on reflection feels quite optimistic, that is the “never seen, never heard” policy, where children have their phones but do not turn them on and do not look at them; I am not sure where those children are. Does the Minister know how this works in practice?

Is the DfE working with researchers in the field so that they can make sure that schools and trusts have the highest quality information possible? How does the department plan to use the evidence from the Children’s Commissioner’s survey, which will be complete by the end of the year? Given the mounting evidence of the risks that mobile phones pose, combined with wider social media risks, can the Minister explain why the Government are not supporting Josh MacAlister’s Private Member’s Bill? Do the Government have plans for any kind of public health campaign directed at parents to make sure that they are aware of the risks of phones?

The importance of a healthy childhood was captured very simply many years ago by Aristotle, who said:

“The habits formed we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference”.


With that in mind, I look forward to the Minister’s remarks.