Leave school phone bans to head teachers, children's commissioner says

Banning phones in schools should be a decision for head teachers and not "imposed nationally by the government", England's children's commissioner has said.

Nine in ten secondary schools restrict the use of smartphones, according to a survey of 19,000 schools and colleges commissioned by Dame Rachel de Souza.

Dame Rachel said children were racking up hours of screen time at home instead, and that "the people with the real power here are the parents".

Her comments come as the general secretary of the UK's largest teaching union said a government ban on phones would "take the pressure off schools".

Her survey suggests 99.8% of primary and 90% of secondary schools limit pupils' use of phones during the school day.

Most primary schools (76%) require pupils to hand in their phones or leave them in a secure place during the day, whereas most secondary schools (79%) say phones must be kept out of sight and not used.

The survey did not cover how thoroughly these policies are implemented, or their success rate.

A separate survey of 502 eight to 15-year-olds, also commissioned by Dame Rachel, suggests:

"These children are not spending these hours on their phones while sat in school," Dame Rachel said in a new report.

She said schools should educate young people about online risks - but parents and carers needed more help to manage their children's online habits and technology companies must "take responsibility for making the online world safe".

She added that she would back any head teacher's decision to ban phones, but added: "It should always be their choice, based on their knowledge of what's best for the children in their own classrooms, not a direction imposed nationally by the government."

However, her report also recommended the government should "conduct more research into the potential benefits of wider restrictions on children's use of phones, particularly social media".