How many schools ban mobile phones?

In truth, there isn’t a completely clear answer to the question of how many schools ban phones. We do know that most secondary teachers said in a survey last year that they work in schools where pupils are not allowed to use phones at all during the day—although many of those schools allow pupils to keep the phones in their possession.

On the other hand, there is evidence from the National Behaviour Survey that in practice mobile phones are quite often used in secondary school classrooms in England, in contravention of these rules.

What information is available?

We have contacted Mr Starmer and Ms Badenoch to ask what data they were referring to, and haven’t had a response. But there is some evidence that supports both of their claims. (Education policy is devolved, so we have assumed they were both talking about schools in England, which the UK government controls.)

A 2019 government survey found that 49% of secondary schools operated a “strict no-use policy”. Then in late 2022 the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that 70% of the 137 secondary schools in England who answered the question said that “the use of cell phones is not allowed on the school premises”. (PISA estimated that this covered about 71.8% of pupils [link starts download].)

The education research company Teacher Tapp has run regular surveys of teachers in England, asking them about phone policies in their schools. The most recent of these, in February 2024, estimated that 5% of secondary teachers worked in schools where phones were not allowed on the premises, and the schools of a further 9% took possession of phones during the school day.

The think tank Policy Exchange submitted Freedom of Information requests to a random selection of 250 maintained secondary schools in England in December 2023, asking them for details of their policies on mobile phones. Of the 162 that responded, 13% had what Policy Exchange categorised as an “effective ban”, and a further 52% had a ban “but phone present with student”.  Almost all the rest had a “partial ban”, which included policies where a phone could be used at the direction of a teacher. It’s hard to know how well this sample of 162 schools represented schools in England generally.

What counts as a ‘ban’?

The Teacher Tapp and Policy Exchange figures could roughly substantiate Ms Badenoch’s claim of only one in ten schools being “smartphone free”—although they concern secondary schools only. The Conservative party press office reposted a comment mentioning the Teacher Tapp survey from the director of research at Policy Exchange, which may mean that Ms Badenoch did have these sources in mind.

At the same time, the Teacher Tapp data might also be said to support Mr Starmer, if we use a slightly broader definition of a “school phones ban”, because a further 48% of secondary teachers said pupils were not allowed to use phones at all during the day at their schools, while another 21% said that pupils were not allowed to use their phones unless directed to by a teacher.

In other words, according to Teacher Tapp’s survey last year, about 83% of secondary teachers work in schools where pupils are not allowed to use their phones (unless told to by a teacher in some cases).

This could reasonably mean that “almost every school bans phones in school”, as Mr Starmer put it—although again, this is a survey of teachers, not schools, and it only includes secondary schools, not all of them.

Current guidance to schools, published by the Conservative government in February 2024, says: “We are determined that all schools should prohibit the use of mobile phones throughout the school day – not only during lessons but break and lunchtimes as well.” So it does seem like most secondary teachers work in schools with a policy that follows this.

But… are phone bans actually followed?

As anyone who’s been to school will know, not every pupil follows the rules. So there could be a big difference between the number of schools that ban phones and the number where those bans are effectively enforced.

The most recently published National Behaviour Survey, which collected data in May 2023, shows that a comfortable majority of secondary school teachers and pupils reported illicit mobile phone use in class at least on rare occasions during the past week.

Ms Badenoch may have been referring to this data when she said later in the exchange at PMQs: “His own government’s evidence says that phones disrupt nearly half of GCSE classes every single day.” The survey does show that 46% of GCSE pupils (Year 10 and 11) reported this behaviour in most or all lessons, although it doesn’t tell us how disruptive this behaviour was.

Pupils in the survey answered this question: “Thinking about the lessons/classes you attended during the past week of term, how often, if at all, did the following occur when it was not supposed to: Pupils using mobile phones.” This could therefore include quite mild forms of misbehaviour, like checking the time, as well as other uses that would be more disruptive to learning.