Mobile phones in schools: Your questions, answered

The SFC Schools Network sat down with the UK Government Minister for Early Education, Olivia Bailey, to discuss the new statutory guidance on mobile phones in schools in England.

This interview was an opportunity to get clarity on the current guidance and gain a fuller understanding of the policy detail.

We received hundreds of questions from across the SFC community. We put them to the Minister, and these were her answers.

Written responses from the Department for Education

The Department for Education has offered to provide written responses to some of the questions we didn't reach, and we will publish them here as soon as we receive them.

Where we go from here

What the interview offers is an honest picture of the UK government's current position. In places, we know that position doesn’t go far enough.

There is still work to do, and we'll keep going. We'll keep making the case to governments across the UK to go further, pushing for a more ambitious approach to smartphone-free schools, and we'll keep raising the concerns teachers and parents across the community have shared with us.

The most powerful change has never depended on government alone. It is already happening in schools right now. Right across the country, schools are choosing to go further, moving beyond ‘no see, no hear’ to genuinely smartphone-free environments, and seeing the difference it makes for their pupils and their whole community.

That is where the biggest transformations are found, and we will keep supporting schools to do exactly that.