MPs were spotted glued to their mobile phones on the same day ministers moved ahead with a pledge to ban children from using them in schools.
Guidance published by the Department for Education has been hailed as a significant step by Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, who originally pledged to bring forward changes prohibiting mobile phone use in schools at last October’s Tory conference.
The promise was met with scepticism at the time, and one trade union on Monday branded it a “non-policy for a non-problem”.
In England, it is currently up to individual heads to decide their own policies on mobile phones and whether they should be banned.
The guidance, which is non-statutory, instructs headteachers on how to ban the use of phones not only during lessons but during break and lunch periods as well.
It also suggests that staff could search pupils and their bags for mobile phones if necessary, noting that “headteachers can and should identify mobile phones and similar devices as something that may be searched for in their school behaviour policy”.
But Keegan might want to look closer to home before she instructs young people to put their devices down.
This photo from the Mirror’s John Stevens shows scores of Tory MPs on their phones in parliament on the same day as the new guidance was rolled out.
People in glass houses, eh!
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