Mobile Phones in Schools

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Tenacity is a good word; I was thinking of something a little tougher earlier.

I really do welcome this Statement and join with others in regretting that we have had to fight so hard for it. I looked this up in Hansard and noticed that the first time we debated this was five years ago. The battle of last year, or a couple of years ago, was the culmination of us all coming together. I say that not to take anything away from that particular fight but to make a broader point about the things that we did not get in that Bill.

I thank the Secretary of State in particular for the Statement and for getting it over the line now. She has succeeded where others have failed. I really want to recognise that moment.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to independent certification of educational technology—something else that we have fought for over many years—and in particular its references to filtering and monitoring. I was very grateful for the letter from the early years Minister and his officials earlier in the week. However, I am concerned about the focus on safety; it is much narrower than I and other noble Lords have been calling for. I absolutely understand what the Minister here said about safety being a crucial factor, but it is a minimal bar: children flourishing in education is what we all seek and I think that would be a better bar. I am sure that we all recognise, just as with mobile phones, that the question is not simply whether technology is safe but “What is it replacing?”

I was at a conference about AI in education a couple of weeks ago, and the overwhelming evidence was—as the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, mentioned—that many of the AI products currently available produced better results in tests, but then the children failed to retain what they had learned. The response at the conference, which was largely focused on putting AI into schools, was simply that the tech would get better. That is tantamount to asking children to teach AI, rather than AI teaching children.

I am sure that the Minister will remember that I had amendments in the same Bill on edtech and on standards for efficacy, et cetera. I recognise that the Government have chosen to do this in guidance, but I ask that they take a broader view on what we need to look at in edtech. Schools are places where children grow, not just learn, and where relationships, confidence and agency matter just as much as passing tests and measurable outcomes. I will again say that I welcome the Statement, but I ask the Minister to ensure that independent certification and the Government’s wider approach to technology in schools protect the things that most matter for a child’s development and cannot be readily measured.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for the work that she has been engaged in, alongside our officials, in the scope of the certification scheme. That has been welcomed. On the point about whether the focus is only on safety, I think we have a broad conception of safety in the standards against which the certification will be made.

For example, as I said, this will be certification against the standards, including our world-leading generative AI standards, which recognises that cognitive development of children is an important aspect to be considered when thinking in broad terms about safety. I do not think that the certification will have quite the narrow scope that the noble Baroness suggests, but I reiterate the point that we are interested not only in certification of products but in research on what is effective, how and where, and for whom—we are investing money in that—and we are looking forward for other uses of AI in education, where we will produce further guidance.