Teaching union calls for clearer rules to stop mobile phone disruption in schools

SCOTLAND’S largest teaching union has called on councils to make sure they have effective guidance on the use of mobile phones in school after a report blamed social media for a breakdown in classroom discipline.

Larry Flanagan of the EIS yesterday said clear rules are required on the appropriate use of mobiles, Twitter and Facebook as he described the challenges posed by inappropriate use of new technology.

Mr Flanagan said regulating mobile phone use had become a “grey area” in schools and it was important to have clear guidance which defined the circumstances under which a phone could be confiscated.

“A school should have a policy about mobile phones, and if it is breached then the phone could be temporarily confiscated and handed over to senior management and the pupil would get it back later,” e said.

“All local authorities need to have appropriate guidance in place on all aspects of technology. It is important for people to understand what is acceptable and what is not acceptable when it comes to Facebook comments, tweeting each other.”

Getting pupils to hand in their phones at the beginning of a lesson did not offer a solution, he continued.

The EIS general secretary said there were questions over whether teachers had the right to take a mobile phone from a child. “It has been suggested that somehow teachers should routinely gather in the phones and hand them back out at the end of the lesson,” Mr Flanagan said. “Apart from the fact that this would be time-consuming, do you actually have the right to take the phone off people if it is switched off and not being used inappropriately?”

Mr Flanagan said there were other “huge complications” associated with children handing their phones in en masse at the beginning of a lesson.

“Some of these phones are worth hundreds of pounds. You could have £3,000 of equipment that you are supervising for an hour,” he said.

“If there is no breach of school policy and you simply took a phone off a child, the issue for a teacher is the liability for a phone if it goes missing, for example. And that has happened in the past. This idea, ‘Let’s just take the phones off the pupils’, is difficult.”

Earlier this week, a Scottish Government report found that the use of smartphones in schools had risen dramatically since 2009, disturbing lessons and distracting pupils.

Secondary headteachers have warned that support for teachers experiencing problems with pupils’ mobile phone use varies across the country.

Mr Flanagan said: “There is a huge issue with kids creating websites, ascribing teachers’ names to Photoshop images.

“To be honest, it is the sort of thing that in the past might have been scrawled on the toilet wall. It seems to have a more damaging impact when it is on a website that is out there and remains there.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said there was no specific guidance or laws issued centrally and governing pupils’ mobile phones in school.

“It is up to schools and local authorities to produce their own guidance,” she said.