{"id":541520,"date":"2026-04-20T18:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/541520\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T18:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:56:08","slug":"phones-to-be-banned-in-schools-by-law-in-england-under-government-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/541520\/","title":{"rendered":"Phones to be banned in schools by law in England under government plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, Baroness Smith said ministers “recognise the strength of feeling on this issue, both in this House and beyond”.<\/p>\n

She said the existing guidance, external<\/a> already provided schools with “a range of approaches” but that a ban would “place the existing guidance on a statutory footing” and create “a clear legal requirement for schools”.<\/p>\n

But the head of the Association of School and College Leaders said a legal ban “doesn’t really change very much” because most schools already enforce their own bans.<\/p>\n

“What would really be helpful is for the government to make funding available to schools for the safe and secure storage of mobile phones, such as storage lockers or locked pouches,” said the union’s general secretary Pepe Di’Iasio.<\/p>\n

He also called for “much tougher regulatory action taken to tackle the harm caused by social media and the excessive use of smartphones,” which generally happens outside of school time.<\/p>\n

Because education is a devolved area, the approach to phones in schools varies across the UK.<\/p>\n

The Scottish government brought in guidance allowing headteachers to implement phone bans in schools in 2024.<\/p>\n

In Wales, there is no national ban but heads have the power to ban or restrict the use of devices in their own schools.<\/p>\n

And in Northern Ireland, a phone-free pilot scheme in nine schools has just ended, with a report due to be published in June.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Branwen Jeffreys and Kate McGough<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Monday, Baroness Smith said ministers “recognise the strength of feeling on this issue, both in this House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-541520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541520","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=541520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}