Another week, another “schools should” edict.
The recent announcement that mobile phone guidance will be strengthened is unsurprising, but unnecessary. We are by now well-versed in the risks connected technology poses for children.
Streams of over-curated content promote unrealistic standards, and the lack of oversight by companies permits easy circumvention of age-related safeguards. At the same time, algorithmic logic pushes social media users towards more extreme content before they have acquired the critical faculty to reject it.
The politics of being seen to act tough is compelling.
Generative AI allows learners to shortcut the process of learning through cognitive offloading. The “anxious generation” faces many challenges that are likely compounded, if not caused, by access to social media and screens. The politics of being seen to act tough is compelling.
Less compelling is the evidence that this will have the meaningful impact that the DfE would like. The proposed changes are only to guidance, which is not legally binding, and the precise wording has not been announced. More importantly, the focus on schools is problematic for at least three reasons:
Regulatory load
The first is that providing more guidance adds to the regulatory load already facing schools. The recent updates to RSE are an example: the extra stipulations, all sensible in isolation, made no allowances for the opportunity cost of delivering more.
Schools are already well aware of the problems that mobile phones can cause and are taking steps to address this. As with many schools, our own approach has been cautious and restrictive for years, and we have worked hard to get parental and pupil buy-in.
Schools are already well aware of the problems that mobile phones can cause.
Having the weight of the DfE behind us perhaps helps those conversations, but the social reaction against access to social media and smartphones at an early age is already happening. Adding specificity to what schools must do prevents them from taking approaches that reflect their own contexts, and encourages a tick-box approach. It shows a lack of faith in school leaders to pursue policies and rules that best support schools’ primary aim: teaching.
Not just a ‘school problem’
The second can be found in the announcement itself: “The Milburn review warned [of] pupils saying they stayed up as late as 3am scrolling … schools should be a place that provides a clear break from those pressures”.
Asking schools to solve this overlooks the broader issue: it is not within schools that school-age children are necessarily encountering most difficulties, and it is not in schools that children spend most of their time. Locking away devices for seven hours a day will solve little if children have unfettered access for the remaining 17.
Schools are a relatively easy target. The tech companies are a much more difficult one.
Schools already often find themselves in the position of having to deal with problematic behaviour online between pupils that happens outside of school hours. But increasing the focus on schools minimises the role that parents, companies and wider society must play. A narrative that depicts a phone problem as a school problem may be convenient, but is at best only a partial truth.
Easy target
The third question is whether school guidance can tackle the root of the problem: it may help treat it, but it is not a cure. Schools are a relatively easy target. The companies creating algorithms designed to get us hooked, and marketing hardware and software to children, are a much more difficult one.
Schools want to feel supported in the decisions they make without these being spelled out for them.
This latest announcement strikes me as a way of signalling that the government is still aware and keen to be seen to respond, rather than adding much to what must be a societal solution to a social problem.
The DfE is right to be sceptical about phones in schools – and schools themselves already know this. Schools want to feel supported in the decisions they make without these being spelled out for them.
At MCS, we have always resisted defaulting to screens in classrooms when not addressing a specific educational need. Pupils are rarely hiding behind screens, and lessons are driven by lively discussion and rigorous questioning.
Guided by research and an awareness of their own contexts, many schools are following this approach already. “Strengthened mobile phone guidance” may keep the problem on the agenda, but is unlikely to solve it.
