Bridget Phillipson will review whether guidance on the use of smartphones in schools is working amid calls for an outright ban.
The education secretary has tasked officials with scrutinising whether schools in England are banning children’s phones and whether bans are effective. The move comes amid growing pressure from MPs to act on teenagers’ harmful use of social media.
The current guidance says ministers are “determined that all schools should prohibit the use of mobile phones throughout the school day – not only during lessons but break and lunchtimes as well”.
However, research from Teacher Tapp, an app that surveys teachers, estimated last year that 48 per cent of secondary schools ban the use of phones at all times of the school day and only nine per cent collect phones at the start of the day.
Labour voted this week against a Tory amendment to the Safer Phones Bill that called for a full ban on smartphones in schools, and the government does not support a ban on social media for under 16s.
Ms Phillipson said last Friday that phones are “disruptive, distracting, bad for behaviour”, adding: “They have no place in our schools.”
She told the Association of School and College Leaders: “The government’s position is clear: you have our full backing in ridding our classrooms of the disruption of phones”.
She added that she had “tasked my officials to look at how we can more effectively monitor what’s happening on the ground”.
The technology secretary Peter Kyle has commissioned separate research from the University of Cambridge to assess the impact of social media and smartphones on children.
It comes after a University of Birmingham study concluded that banning phones in schools is not linked to pupils getting higher grades or having better mental wellbeing.
However, academics did find that spending longer on smartphones and social media was linked to worse results.
Dr Victoria Goodyear, the study’s lead author, said the findings suggested that smartphone bans “in isolation are not enough to tackle the negative impacts”.
In the Commons on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer backed calls for a new Netflix series Adolescence to be shown in Parliament and schools. He told MPs he had been watching the show, which follows the family of a 13-year-old schoolboy who is accused of the brutal murder of a young girl.
The show’s writer Jack Thorne has said smartphones should be banned for children until the age of 16 and should be treated like cigarettes.