{"id":464331,"date":"2026-03-08T14:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T14:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/464331\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T14:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T14:03:11","slug":"social-media-ban-paul-givan-sympathetic-to-call-for-change-in-northern-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/464331\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media ban: Paul Givan ‘sympathetic’ to call for change in Northern Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) minister Givan said his party has not made a “clear policy decision” on the issue.<\/p>\n

In September 2025, Givan began a phone-ban pilot in nine schools in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

“I introduced a clear policy for all schools that we shouldn’t have smart phones being accessed in our post-primary settings from when you arrive in school until you leave school,” he told BBC News NI’s Sunday Politics. <\/p>\n

“We need to see effective implementation of that policy.”<\/p>\n

The pilot scheme, which aimed at restricting pupils from using their mobile phones during school hours, was hailed as “very beneficial” among those participating in the scheme in September.<\/p>\n

The pilot, which will aim to explore the benefits of a phone-free school day, runs until March.<\/p>\n

Last September, Fiona Kane, principal at St Ronan’s College, said the scheme had “transformed learning and teaching”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Phones are a massive distraction during the day and there would have been incidents where pupils would have a sneaky look during lessons,” she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) minister Givan said his party has not made a “clear policy decision” on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-464331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}