Phone bans in England’s schools will be enforced by law in a new advisory from the Department of Education.
The Department of Education has announced it intends to amend its Children’s Wellbeing and Schools bill to make phone bans statutory.
The guidances advises schools to ban mobile devices, but headteachers are able to ignore the advice if they disagree.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We have been consistently clear that mobile phones have no place in schools, and the majority already prohibit them.
“This amendment makes existing guidance statutory, giving legal force to what schools are already doing in practice.”
Teachers have long warned smartphones can distract pupils from learning or lead to bullying.
Peers have twice voted to introduce an age limit in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, but both efforts were rejected by MPs in the Commons.
As part of the Bill, ministers are set to gain a flexible power to curb children’s social media use with curfews, scrolling limits and restrictions on location sharing.
Sir Keir Starmer met with executives from technology companies Meta, Snap, Google, TikTok and X at Downing Street where the Prime Minister said that things “must change”.
Sir Keir said: “Things can’t go on like this, they must change because right now social media is putting our children at risk.
“In a world in which children are protected, even if that means access is restricted, that is preferable to a world where harm is the price of participation.”
