Mobile Phones in Schools

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, first I thank noble Lords who were so generous in their remarks about my part in getting us to this point. As was noted, I was definitely not alone; other noble Baronesses who are in the House tonight were there on the journey. I am not sure what the Minister and I will talk about if we cannot talk about “not seen, not heard” any more, but I hope we will find something else.

I have a few specific questions for the Minister; if she would prefer to write on any of them, I would be very happy with that. First, the Statement talks about there being flexibility around children who have medical needs and SEND. Could she give the House an example of where a child with SEND would need their personal mobile device, as opposed to a school-provided device that would meet their needs? Secondly, will the guidance cover school trips as well as the school day? We know that some pretty terrible things have happened with phones on school trips. Also, are the Government planning to future-proof the guidance? Schools are talking about smart watches and smart glasses. How do the Government intend to approach that?

I was very pleased to read in the Statement that the Government plan to talk to head teachers. Many of us in this House know some really pioneering head teachers, including those who have prohibited phones completely, used brick phones or taken other approaches. I am sure they would be delighted either to meet directly with the Minister or to contribute as the guidance is developed.

Finally, in our debates on mobile phones and on social media, we learned that health professionals were often the first to spot a lot of the problems that we are now talking about. Speech and language therapists, opticians and so on were noticing changes in children. Is there a place for some of those health experts as the edtech kitemark is developed?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness; it is certainly the case that she has been tenacious on this issue. We have talked about lots of other things, and I am sure we will again in future. I am slightly fearful about what she will choose to get her teeth into next.

On the examples, in this House we have previously talked about specific assistive technology that might be important for young people and medical technology that is linked to a phone, for example for diabetes monitoring. Those would be the sorts of things that would fall into that category.

On the point about school trips, it is not the intention of the guidance that this policy will apply when children are travelling to and from school, so I feel it probably would not cover school trips. I will come back to the noble Baroness if I am wrong about that.

The noble Baroness makes an important point about future-proofing all this. The fact that we have updated the guidance and are taking further action around edtech demonstrates the situation we find ourselves in. Both the evidence and technology are developing fast, and of course we will want to keep up with that.

On the methods and gadgets that the noble Baroness discussed, we intend to produce AI in education guidance that will help identify some of the opportunities and issues in other areas. I do not know how long I will be here, particularly given the way I am feeling this evening, but I have no doubt that this will not be the last time I talk about how we are updating our work in government to ensure that the objective that all noble Lords share—that children need to be able to focus on learning rather than scrolling or the distraction that comes from screens—is at the heart of our work.

Her final point about health experts was a very good one. I will certainly take that back and consider how we engage with health experts as part of this work.