Schools: Mobile Phones

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Kidron for securing this important debate and I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Cass. In case anybody has not met me and does not know, I am a state secondary school teacher in Hackney.

I thank all the organisations that sent briefings, but most of them were about online safety and I will confine my remarks to smartphones in schools. As we have heard, the Parentkind survey found that 83% of parents say that smartphones are harmful to young people. I disagree—I love smartphones.

Due to some rather complex arrangements, I have three 13 year-olds in my household. They use smartphones to keep in touch, play games, organise their sporting activities, do homework, talk to friends and, equally importantly, talk to relatives at home and abroad. To take a smartphone away from a secondary school pupil would be to isolate them almost totally and to stigmatise them.

I think smartphones are great, but not in schools. In 10 years of teaching, I have never taught in a school that allows mobile phones and I hope that I never do. The school where I trained, St George’s in Westminster, was one of the first state schools to ban mobile phones in school because in December 1995 a mobile phone call from the school summoned a gang that ended up killing the head teacher, Philip Lawrence.

The school where I presently teach, Mossbourne Community Academy, does not allow phones for students under 16 for all the obvious reasons. One of the most important is that our students wear distinctive uniforms. They are not allowed to carry cash either. It makes them not worth mugging, always a risk in our part of Hackney. Students who are seen with a phone or in a shop in school uniform are severely punished. It is amazing how a cashless and phoneless walk home can reduce the desire for a little light shoplifting or to take revenge on social media.

The worry that we hear from parents is about the journey home. Our pupils have to go the most direct route home after school, so parents know when to expect them. Any detentions, sports fixtures or clubs are written in advance in a pupil’s planner, an A5 diary that they will have with them at all times. If their public transport is delayed, pupils are told to seek a responsible-looking adult and politely ask whether they could send a message home, saying what has happened.

The Carers Trust talks of the importance of young carers needing a phone to stay in contact. As we have already said, it is much more important to give young carers time and space for their education, safe in the knowledge that, if there is an emergency, they can be contacted. Any school wanting to ban phones must have an efficient system to get a message through to students when it is needed. Plans change. We all know that.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, the only exception should be for medical conditions. Diabetes UK makes a very sensible point that diabetes management is now mainly through an app. All this should be part of an individual healthcare plan. I agree that it is vital that children should use the latest technology to manage serious medical conditions.

We have survived many thousands of years without smartphones in schools. Why do we need them now?