Academy chain with 35,000 pupils to be first in England to go phone-free

A national academy chain is to become the first in England to be phone-free, removing access to smartphones from its 35,000 pupils during the school day due to their “catastrophic” impact on children’s mental health and learning.

The Ormiston academies trust , which runs 44 state schools including 32 secondaries, has begun phasing out access to phones at all its schools across the country, with eight secondary schools adopting new policies this term and the rest to follow, after liaising with parents.

The move comes as school leaders and policymakers across the world are considering tougher restrictions on how children use and interact with smartphones, including a recent French government report recommending a bar on internet-enabled phones for children under 13, and only allowing access to social media after the age of 16.

Tom Rees, Ormiston’s chief executive, said the status quo in most schools – allowing pupils to keep phones during the school day – was an inadequate response to the disruption phones caused to pupil learning and wellbeing.

He said: “We are seeing huge and real concerns around mental health, post-pandemic. These are not just self-reported, we’re also seeing real concerns about self-harm, attempted suicide, A&E admissions – these are facts from across the world involving young people and adolescents.

“We’re seeing a clear correlation between that and mobile phone and social media use, in particular. Not all mobile phone use is equal and the relationship between that and adolescent mental health, we think, is overwhelming.

“There is a responsibility for society to respond, and a responsibility for schools to make it harder for children to access inappropriate content through the school day and restrict the draw of social media.”

Rees said pupils’ access to phones was already banned at Ormiston’s primary, special needs and alternative provision schools, and that stricter policies were needed across its secondary schools to improve learning.

He said: “Learning can’t happen without attention. A lot of this is about a battle for attention, a battle for focus and concentration. It’s not just about having your phone out and using it, it’s the mere presence of the phone.

“There’s evidence that tells us that even if your phone is in the same room, it could be in your bag or pocket, your brain is leaking attention, still thinking about it and being drawn to it, wondering if there has been a notification on it and what it might be.

“That is impacting young people’s ability to learn, to retain information, to concentrate, to focus. An increasing distraction is catastrophic for the process of learning, and that’s true both at school and at home.”

Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, said he was open-minded about following Australia’s move to ban social media for under-16s. “It is making some young people increasingly vulnerable. We don’t have yet much evidence about what action makes a big difference in response or is indeed effective. So I’m looking very closely at the Australian experience and I’m open-minded. I would do anything to keep young people safe,” he told BBC Radio 4.

Ara Darzi, the peer and former health minister, told the Times he thought there needed to be action on young people’s access to social media. “There are 109,000 kids waiting for mental health support. It’s just awful; that’s the future generation. These are the kids who will produce the journalists, the doctors, the nurses. It’s frightening,” he said.

“If anything could be done on social media on a personal basis, I will vote for it, no question about that. I don’t know the solutions but we have to have some controls on access to some of the materials you can get access to on social media.”

Earlier this year the Department for Education (DfE) updated its advice on mobile phones , giving school leaders in England greater options to ban or restrict them. But as the advice was non-statutory, there has been no reason for schools to change policies.

However, research by Ofcom , the UK’s communications regulator, has found that children’s phone ownership rose steeply from age eight until the age of 12, when ownership swelled to more than 90%, setting off demands to further restrict phone use in schools.

In May, St Albans launched an effort to become the UK’s first city to go smartphone-free for children under 14. Meanwhile some mainstream secondary schools have begun to insist pupils can only bring “brick” or non-internet phones with them.

But other governments have been prepared to go further. The Netherlands education ministry this year in effect banned phones, tablets and smartwatches from classrooms, warning that harsher regulations would follow if schools failed to enforce the policy.

In France, the authors of a report commissioned by the government said they were “bowled over” by the consequences of hyperconnectivity for child health and education, with Amine Benyamina, an expert on addiction, saying it was used “to lock children on to their screens, control them, retain them, monetise them”.

After the report’s publication the French government announced a trial at more than 200 secondary schools that requires pupils to hand over their phones on arrival.

Related: ‘It went nuts’: Thousands join UK parents calling for smartphone-free childhood

Tom Bennett, an adviser to the DfE on behaviour policy, said Ormiston’s phone-free policy was the most ambitious he was aware of, and part of a wider national and international trend towards tighter restrictions.

He said: “Culture has now finally caught up with technology, and the evidence base has now confirmed what many people suspected for a long time – that mobile phones are a serious detriment to children’s learning and probably their mental health and wellbeing, and even their safety when they are unsupervised.

“The school environment is very much about focus, motivation and thinking hard about things. Mobile phones promote the opposite: grazing, superficial thinking and novelty and entertainment, which is why we now know the negative effect that mobile phones can have.”

Bennett added that “one of the simplest things any school can do is to completely ban their use”, except in “permitted circumstances” such as for children commuting to and from school.

He said he visited several schools each week and had noticed more “waking up to the reality” of the impact on children’s lives. “Most schools have a mobile phone policy which involves some type of restriction, but what I see is a lot of schools that don’t enforce those policies very thoroughly, which means phone access is still easily available, in toilets, in social spaces or corridors or at breaks.

“The wise school restricts even these times and makes sure that all teachers are supported to know how, when and why they are confiscating mobile phones.”