\n<\/p>\n
Two fathers plan to take legal action against the government in an attempt to get smartphones banned in schools in England.<\/p>\n
Will Orr-Ewing and Pete Montgomery wrote to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, on Friday warning that they would seek a judicial review. They argue that current guidance, which allows headteachers to decide how smartphones are used, is unlawful and unsafe for children.<\/p>\n
The Department for Education now has 14 days to officially respond to the letter, after which point the claimants can issue judicial review proceedings.<\/p>\n
The DfE said schools already had the power to ban phones and it was bringing in \u201cbetter protections\u201d from harmful content through the Online Safety Act.<\/p>\n
A national survey ordered by Rachel de Souza, the children\u2019s commissioner for England, published in April revealed that 90% of all schools in England have banned mobile phone use by pupils. The survey found that 79% of secondary schools allowed students to keep their phones while banning their use or display, while 8% required phones to be handed in, and 3% stopped pupils from bringing them to school altogether.<\/p>\n
The two fathers, who have brought their claim under the name Generation Alpha, argue that smartphones are still being used dangerously and the safest approach for children would be a complete ban on smartphones in schools.<\/p>\n
Orr-Ewing said there was evidence that devices were being used to access harmful \u201cvery violent or sexual\u201d content or for cyberbullying.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that when children use smartphones they usually don\u2019t do it in a safe way,\u201d he said. \u201cParents have told us about boys being filmed naked in the PE changing rooms and then shared across the school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Girls were \u201cbeing manipulated by predators on messaging platforms during lessons and in school toilets\u201d and \u201ctiny children\u201d were being shown \u201cgraphic pornography\u201d on the school bus by other children, he added.<\/p>\n
The fathers said a ban on smartphones was a \u201cno-brainer\u201d, and argued that children should only have \u201cbrick phones\u201d to communicate with parents if needed.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Last week government guidance from the DfE on keeping children safe at school acknowledged that some children might use smartphones to bully or sexually harass other children, share indecent images and access and share pornography. Schools should \u201ccarefully consider how this is managed\u201d, it stated.<\/p>\n Montgomery said there was evidence that schools were still not taking the necessary steps to safeguard children. The pair made freedom of information requests to schools in England about safeguarding incidents related to smartphones and social media; one school had passed 55 such incidents to social services in the last academic year, 17 of which were referred to the police.<\/p>\n \u201cA statutory ban would be a huge relief for headteachers and parents alike,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The DfE said: \u201cSchools already have the power to ban phones, and we support headteachers to take the necessary steps to prevent disruption, backed by our clear guidance on how to restrict their use. We know there are wider issues with children\u2019s online experiences, which is why we are also bringing in better protections from harmful content through the Online Safety Act.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two fathers plan to take legal action against the government in an attempt to get smartphones banned in schools in England. Will Orr-Ewing and Pete Montgomery wrote to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, on Friday warning that they would seek a judicial review. They argue that current guidance, which allows headteachers to decide how smartphones<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[919,1653,2456,3978,1145,324,1436,253,588,3342],"class_list":{"0":"post-10832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-action","9":"tag-banned","10":"tag-englands","11":"tag-fathers","12":"tag-internet","13":"tag-legal","14":"tag-plan","15":"tag-safety","16":"tag-schools","17":"tag-smartphones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}