Mobile Phones in Schools

Pam Cox Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister]

Absolutely. Winsford academy, like many schools, has got ahead of this issue. I imagine that the teachers there saw the big impact on learning and teaching that uncontrolled smartphone use had in the school. It is because of the work of those schools—40% of secondary schools have gone ahead of the existing statutory guidance and are making sure that children do not have access to phones in their blazers or bags—that we are confident that we can do this for the whole of England. We are drawing the line in the sand a bit further and saying that when children are in schools, they should not have any of the distractions that come with a smartphone or any phone at all.

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

The Stanway school in Colchester gained national attention through a Channel 4 documentary called “Swiped: The School That Banned Smartphones”, in which phone-free experiments saw pupils who took part reporting lower anxiety, improved concentration and an extra hour of sleep each night. Does the Minister agree that the experience of students in Colchester demonstrates the benefits of smartphone-free schools? What support will be in place to help more schools adopt those policies?

[Josh MacAlister]

I went to the screening of “Swiped” when it came out and met some of the staff who were involved in the project and some of the researchers. The project showed the impact on children over a period of weeks when they had that time freed back up. If I remember rightly, part of the experiment involved children putting their phones in a perspex box on the way into school, and it was left there for a number of weeks. I do wonder what the impact on this House would be if we were to do the same as an experiment.