Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Hughes of Stretford and Baroness Morris of Yardley

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I want to explore a little more whether a school ought to be able to search and erase material, as mentioned by my noble friend and the noble Lord. Should a mobile phone be a proscribed item for every child in the school? If that is what the Government are proposing, I question that approach and hope that the Minister can clarify the issue.

I agree with all noble Lords that bullying is obnoxious and is a form of terrorism towards children and those exposed to it. It is absolutely invidious and needs to be dealt with very strongly indeed. I believe that if a child is using a phone for such a purpose, they will be using it not only in school but more likely outside too. I question an approach that, instead of instilling responsible behaviour towards mobile phones, seems to allow schools to issue a blanket ban on bringing them into school. A more effective approach would be to enable a school to ban the use of a mobile phone by an individual pupil who has shown to be misusing it rather than applying a blanket ban on bringing phones into school. If that is the approach the Government are proposing, I support them. However, I believe that the other approach is dangerous and contrary to the way in which we deal with other kinds of issues. We are allowed to take mobile phones into the Chamber but, I guess, if we started taking pictures of Members opposite we would be banned—and quite rightly so.

I would be grateful if the Minister could, first, say whether the Government’s approach is to allow a school to issue a blanket proscription and, secondly, if that is so, to comment on the points that I have made.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. I was not going to speak, but this important point strays into another agenda that is relevant here because we could be doing something that is not great. When I have visited schools, I have seen that mobile phones present a real issue—a huge potential advantage and a current problem. Schools are struggling to know what to do.

Coincidentally, on Tuesday I was in a good secondary school in Cambridge that, to be honest, was not faced with huge behavioural problems. I accept that it was not your average challenged secondary school. Its approach to mobile phones gave a clue as to how important they will be on the information technology agenda. Given that the Government do not have much of an IT agenda, with the abolition of Becta we must look at what schools are doing on that. I hope that in the coming months we might get to the point technologically at which we can as a society support schools in using devices such as mobile phones as an essential part of learning in school and with links to home.

That is not for now and that agenda is not quite here at the moment. I would hate to do anything now that would give a message that would make it difficult for some unconfident schools to move along that road in future years.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I shall try to reply briefly to some of those points. I agree with the point made by my noble friend Lord Storey and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that one must be careful not to legislate in a blanket fashion that stores up problems for later. I listen in particular to my noble friend Lord Storey because he knows what he is talking about. He has day-to-day direct involvement and we should listen carefully to his reminder of the problems faced by schools. However, I also accept that a lot of technology can be used for good or for ill. That is to do with what people make of it rather than with the nature of the technology.

In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, our purpose in a number of these approaches is to give individual schools discretion in what to do, taking their circumstances into account. On the regulations that list the items mentioned by the noble Baroness, we have not laid them before the House because I thought that it was important first to take these issues through the House and Committee and to have this debate. We are not seeking to have a blanket ban on mobile phones, but we want to reach the point at which schools can exercise discretion. More generally, the Government will need to take into account the points that have been raised.