Schools: Mobile Phones

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Kidron on her insight, expertise and unflagging focus on this issue. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, to our Benches. The move towards mobile-free schools is gathering momentum around the world—interestingly, particularly in Asia—and the guidance this February from the DfE is very welcome.

I decided to use a real school as an example, so I spent some time yesterday with David Smith, headmaster of Fulham Boys School, to get his insights into the mobile phone policies for his 800 pupils: 97% of seniors and 56% of 10 to 11 year-olds have a smartphone; 42% of his boys reported receiving about 50 notifications per day and 11% reported receiving over 200; and 38% of the boys reported that they are allowed unrestricted access to their smartphone at home by their parents. The boys are happy with the new policy, unlike some of the parents of the older boys, and the parents of the younger boys are ecstatic about it. The parents who are concerned either feel that their children should have unrestricted access or are anxious to be able to be in almost constant contact with them. It is interesting that the parents are far more anxious than their children.

David commented that a smartphone-free school is not the answer, since it will be continuously damaging for children if they are able to use smartphones outside the school. To illustrate that point, many of the 10 or 11 year-olds who arrive there have already been exposed online to pornography, violence and misogyny. He said it is a shame that we have to teach these boys about these elements in society after they have learned about them, rather than before. He and other headmasters are working with smartphone manufacturers to encourage them to develop a scaled-down smartphone which can access some services, such as transport and mapping apps, but not others.

I make three requests of the DfE. I do not necessarily expect an answer at the Dispatch Box, so if the Minister follows up in writing, that would be fine. First, I urge it to work with schools and the mobile phone industry to develop safe intermediate phones that could, for example, be used by child carers or those who have diabetes and other things but will not allow them to access the darker reaches of the online world.

Secondly, the DfE needs to work very closely with Ofsted. I am conscious that, during the passage of the Online Safety Bill, we poured more and more responsibility on to Ofcom. I suspect that in this world we will put more responsibility on to Ofsted. We need to ensure it understands what it is looking for and measuring.

Thirdly, robust, reliable and understandable data is key. I was looking at a major Australian scoping review this year by the Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools, which managed to find only 22 different studies in the entire world which met the threshold of rigour required. The review says there is a severe lack of really reliable evidence and data on which to judge what should be done and the effectiveness of what has been done. Will the Government prioritise working with appropriate institutions and other Governments to develop high-quality, robust evidence and interpretation of outcomes? We know why we are doing this, but we do not know enough about what really works.