A “whole society” approach is needed to stop children doom-scrolling beyond the classroom with most schools already banning mobile phones, research has found.
Data from the children’s commissioner for England reveals 90% of secondary schools and 99.8% of primary schools already have policies in place that stop the use of mobile phones during the day.
However, online safety is still the second most cited concern for school leaders, second only to mental health services.
Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said the findings show banning phones in schools “will not keep children safe when they go home” and stronger action is needed.
Solutions she will call for on Thursday include not giving children under-16s smartphones and greater accountability for tech companies, Sky News understands.
Dame Rachel will also call on parents to model the behaviour they want in their children, such as screen breaks, no phones at meals and not taking phones to bed.
The research showed nearly a quarter of children spend more than four hours a day on an internet-enabled device.
Image: Rachel de Souza. Pic: PA
The data includes responses from 19,000 schools, making it the most comprehensive evidence to date on mobile phone policies in the classroom.
It found most schools had strict rules, including not allowing phones on to school grounds at all, requiring pupils to hand them in or requiring them to be kept out of sight.
Secondary schools were more likely to allow some phone use, with about 10% permittingit during breaks or lunchtime.
The children’s commissioner said the findings prove that most schools already have phone policies aligned with the Department for Education’s non-statutory guidance.
This was introduced by the Tories last year, but the party now says headteachers should be legally required to ban phones from schools, something Labour has ruled out.
Dame Rachel said headteachers do not need “direction imposed nationally by the government”, and rather a “whole-society approach to strengthening safety online” is needed to protect children beyond the school gates.
Calls grow for phone ban despite research
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Headteachers ‘wrong’ not to ban smartphones
Shadow education secretary Laura Trott, who has banned her own children from getting a smartphone until they are 16, said evidence of the damage they do is “undeniable” as she doubled down on her call for a statutory ban.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said this too was his “personal view”, saying a a ban would “alleviate pressure from school leaders, teachers, but also parents”.
This is something many MPs have called for, but the UK government has only gone as far as to support a review into the harms caused by apps like Snapchat and TikTok before any decision on restrictions are made.
Some Labour backbenchers fear ministers are shying away from tough measures to appease US tech firms as it seeks a trade deal to avoid Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The debate around smartphone usage has been heightened by the recent Netflix drama Adolescence, which centres on a 13-year-old boy suspected of murdering his classmate and the rise of incel culture.
The Online Safety Act passed in 2023 requires social media firms to block children from accessing harmful content and all users from accessing illegal content, but it will not be implemented in full until 2026 and it does not address screen time.
Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.
MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.
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Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma
In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.
“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.
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“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.
“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”
Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.
The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.
Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”
In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.
“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”
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“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.
“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”