It seems unbelievable now, but a decade ago we were debating the potential positive merits of mobile phones in schools. Back then, some private school headteachers insisted these mini-computers were a “powerful resource” teachers should “harness” rather than fear. To counter what I can now only call a fantasy, in these pages I argued the opposite case. To introduce them into classrooms would widen the attainment gap between rich and poor students. It would also heap more pressure, I wrote, on children whose parents could not afford the eye-watering costs of the latest smartphone. Looking back, both the defence of phones in schools and my rebuttal of it appear painfully naive.
Phones have proved far worse than either side of the debate could have conceived. Schools know all too well the threat phones pose to pupils’ attention. But it’s more serious than just classroom disruption. Smartphones, and their symbiotic relationship with social media apps, have proved themselves the tobacco of our age. The government’s announcement on Monday that it would turn its existing guidance in England on phones in schools into a statutory ban sounds less like a bold intervention and more like a simple recognition of reality.
