Labour has called for a national mobile phone ban in Scotland’s schools, with ministers accused of having “dithered” and “passed the buck” on the issue.
But education secretary Jenny Gilruth has responded that headteachers should be trusted to make the right call on mobile phones for their school.
Labour education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy said that pupils are being left to “pay the price” for the Scottish government’s inaction on the issue.
She was speaking as the Scottish Parliament debated what Labour said was a “straightforward motion with a straightforward purpose”, calling for mobiles to be banned in classrooms throughout the country to help make schools “calm and safe places to learn”.
Amid the ongoing debate over behaviour in Scotland’s schools, Ms Duncan-Glancy argued that teachers are “firefighting disruption”.
‘Not for me to dictate to teachers’
Ms Gilruth, responding in the Scottish Parliament yesterday afternoon, said the government had issued guidance to schools that means “headteachers are already empowered to carry out mobile phone bans” if they wish.
“I have to ask why Scottish Labour doesn’t trust our headteachers to do that,” she asked. “It’s not for me, sitting in an office in Edinburgh, to dictate to Scotland’s teachers. Why does the Labour Party think it knows better than Scotland’s teachers?”
Ms Gilruth said it was not her experience that “pupils would routinely be sitting with their phones out in class”, adding that this is “quite unlike” the situation with MSPs in the Scottish Parliament’s chamber.
The education secretary agreed that mobile phones “can be a distraction to learning and teaching”, but stressed that local authorities are responsible for running schools, “not the Scottish government”.
She added: “The position of our guidance is that we trust Scotland’s headteachers to take the action they consider necessary, including a mobile phone ban across the school day.”
Ms Duncan-Glancy claimed the government had “issued guidance and then shrugged”, leaving it to individual councils and schools to deal with the issue.
She said: “We now have a postcode lottery with teachers left to bear the weight of this crucial decision. What we’re asking for is national clarity - no phones in class for learners.”
Ms Duncan-Glancy argued that banning phones for pupils in class would be a “practical, proportionate step”.
Schools have ‘improvised’ on phones
Ms Duncan-Glancy added: “The government has dithered and the government has delayed. Schools have improvised, parents have worried and pupils have paid the price.”
She said that schools could “keep muddling through” with the current guidance, or the government could “set a clear expectation that every child in Scotland deserves a calm, phone-free lesson as standard”.
Conservative education spokesperson Miles Briggs also backed a national ban, saying: “In too many cases, our school environments have become toxic with students and teachers experiencing stress, bullying and other negative behaviours, and often at the heart of that can be mobile phones.
“I welcome the fact that there does now seem to be a clear consensus across Parliament that we want to send out a clear message that we want a ban on mobile phones in classrooms, and that is what we want all 32 councils to implement.”
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