The Government has announced plans to make mobile phone bans in English schools a legal requirement, moving beyond the current voluntary guidance that head teachers have been able to disregard at their discretion.
The Department for Education confirmed it will table an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would transform existing advice into a statutory obligation. While schools have long been encouraged to prohibit phones on their premises, the guidance has carried no legal weight — leaving individual head teachers free to opt out if they disagreed with the policy.
The planned amendment would close that gap entirely. A DfE spokesperson said the Government had been “consistently clear” on its position. “Mobile phones have no place in schools, and the majority already prohibit them,” they said. “This amendment makes existing guidance statutory, giving legal force to what schools are already doing in practice.”
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