Schools would benefit from clearer guidance on children’s screen time and mobile phone use, MPs have been told.
Experts have also said that the Department for Education could play a “significant role” in changing social norms around when children should get mobile phones.
The Commons Education Select Committee held its first oral evidence session on the impact of screen time on children’s education and wellbeing on Tuesday.
MPs heard from Parent Zone founder and chief executive Vicki Shotbolt and Internet Matters chief executive Carolyn Bunting about schools’ role on this issue.
The impact of screen time on education and wellbeing
Here are four things MPs on the committee were told.
1. Teachers don’t always have adequate training and resources to teach digital media literacy
Ms Bunting said teachers recognise that digital media literacy is very important, but may have trouble fitting it into the curriculum and may not have “adequate training and sufficient quality resources”.
“It’s pretty fragmented and a bit inconsistent, and is spread across different aspects of the curriculum, whether that’s computing or citizenship. Some schools do it one way and some schools do it another,” she added.
Ms Shotbolt said: “The issue is how do you support teachers so that they can teach this ever-changing space, and that requires training.”
2. Schools need consolidated guidance from the DfE
“If we want to achieve anything at scale [in promoting digital media literacy], it will have to be through schools,” Ms Bunting said.
But she said “schools need more support in knowing where to get good quality information from”.
Ms Shotbolt said media literacy training should be focused on secondary schools.
When MP Ian Mearns suggested that teaching of digital media literacy could become even more variable if schools took action without guidance, Ms Shotbolt responded: “There is guidance in the national curriculum.”
Ms Bunting added that there are “13 different documents” of guidance for schools from the DfE touching on media literacy and screen time. “We could simplify things and consolidate it a bit more and have a clearer sense of guidance for schools,” she said.
MPs were also told that the DfE should give schools more guidance on how to engage parents in media literacy.
MP Miriam Cates asked whether it would be more effective to ban social media for children until they are at least 14, or even 16.
In response, Ms Shotbolt said that “the cat’s out of the bag” in terms of children using social media. “The question of developing a child’s digital resilience needs to start young,” she said.
“Peer pressure among parents is as much of an issue, too, so a blanket rule would really help with that,” she added.
Ms Cates asked who could have the most impact on influencing parents to collectively ban children from using smartphones until they were teenagers.
“I do think the Department for Education would have a very significant role,” Ms Shotbolt said. “If they said primary school children shouldn’t have mobile phones...you would change the social norm, and that social norm has become younger and younger.”
3. Different mobile phone policies across schools create a ‘fragmented’ system
Ms Shotbolt said it would be very difficult to think of a reason why primary school pupils would need phones at school, after Ms Cates asked if there should be a statutory ban on phones in school.
In secondary schools, Ms Shotbolt said, the focus was more on where phones should be stored, as they “shouldn’t be on the person” but children may need them to communicate with parents.
Her opinion was that statutory guidance for schools on mobile phone usage would provide a baseline to move away from the “fragmented” system of all schools creating their own rules.
However, Ms Bunting said storage of mobile phones could be “problematic”, with large schools having to find space to store as many as 1,200 phones.
She said most schools have “well thought out” mobile phone policies already, adding that pupils should not be fully banned from their phones.
“We also see as well, though, that the mobile phone is the only digital device some young people have and, increasingly, if we want children to leave the education system with the right digital skills, simply banning them and having no access, I think, is problematic as well.”
The government announced a planned non-statutory ban on mobile phones in schools in October. It was criticised by unions, who said most schools already had policies in place.
Sufian Sadiq, director of teaching school at Chiltern Learning Trust, wrote for Tes last month that banning phones in schools was a good idea, but if the government really wanted to tackle the impact of phones on education, it should be targeting social media companies.
4. Schools should pay ‘greater attention’ to a child’s digital access at home
Both witnesses said they would like to see more education for the school workforce so that staff can understand how vulnerable children are more at risk of harm when online.
Ms Shotbolt also said she wanted to see schools pay “greater attention” to the digital ecosystem that a child is going home to and how it might affect things like their homework.
She added that there should be a similar scheme for digital access as exists for free school meals. Ms Shotbolt highlighted how during the Covid pandemic some children in need were provided with devices to be able to learn remotely.
