Britain bans cellphones in schools to keep children away from social media violence

Mobile phones will be banned in British schools, according to the directives given to the administrators this Monday. It is an attempt to minimize disruptions, improve students’ behavior in the classroom and distance them from the violence of social networks.

The national rules will support teachers in banning the use of mobile phones during the school day, even during breaks. Students who violate the ban risk detention and confiscation of their phones for as long as the principal deems necessary.

The guide also gives teachers the power of backpack searching and legal protection against complaints from parents for loss or damage to confiscated devices.

It is the result of Esther Ghey’s legal case, which called for a total ban on access to social networks for minors under 16 years of age. She said her daughter Brianna he had become vulnerable after spending too much time online, no real-life contact with friends. He believes Brianna would be alive if her two killers hadn’t had access to violent content on the Internet.

Brianna’s murder

The rules, for elementary and secondary schools, arrive days after the intervention of Brianna’s mother, who asked that her daughter’s murder it was a “turning point” to fix “the mess” of the Internet and social networks”.

Ghey is calling for a ban on social media apps on the smartphones of under-16s, after two youths were convicted of his daughter’s murder.

Brianna was stabbed to death by Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe at Culcheth Linear Park on February 11 last year.

The couple, both 16 now but 15 at the time, they were sentenced to life imprisonment, with minimum sentences of 22 and 20 years respectively, on Friday. A judge also lifted reporting restrictions, allowing them to be named.

Jenkinson visited websites showing images of torture and extreme violence, before killing Brianna. The murder itself was organized on social messaging apps.

Intervention in the Sunday program BBC with Laura Kuenssberg, Esther said child safe phones that monitor children’s Internet use would “without a doubt” save her daughter’s life.

And he is campaigning for new laws “Make mobile phone companies take more responsibility” to help parents protect their children online and monitor their Internet use.

The government listened to her.

Possible policies

Schools are offered four different policies to apply the guidewhich is published almost three years after ministers first promised a phone ban.

The “easiest” option is a total ban on phones for school reasons. Students will be required to leave them at home or with their parents. This policy has “a very simple limit,” meaning students could be disciplined if a phone was found on school property.

A second option would require students give your devices to school staff upon arrival and collected at the end of the school day. Lockers have also been made available, which cannot be accessed until the end of the school day, to allow children to put away their phones during lessons.

A fourth, more liberal policy would give students confidence by allowing them to keep their phones. But only on the “strict condition that they are never used, seen or heard”.The consequences of failing to comply with this policy should be “sufficient to act as an effective deterrent”, the guidance says, and it is “important that schools enforce this policy vigorously, consistently and visibly”.

Low performance

If this policy were adopted, schools would need to make it clear that phones should be turned off and placed in the bottom of backpacks, etc. any failure to comply would result in its confiscation on the spot.

The Department of Education document states that confiscation can be a “effective deterrent” for individual pupils or as a “general deterrent for all pupils in the school”.

One in three high school students say phones they are used in most classrooms without permission. The Department for Education cited Ofcom data showing that 97% of children have their own phone by the age of 12. He also cited a call by UNESCO, the education, science and culture arm of the United Nations, for phones to be banned in schools, after evidence linking their use to lower academic achievement.

The guidance is designed to ensure greater consistency across schools in England. But the power to decide the school’s telephone policy will remain with the principal.

Gillian Keegan, the UK’s education minister, said the guide would provide teachers with the information they need “tools for taking measures to improve behavior”adding: “Schools are places where children can learn and cell phones are, at the very least, an unwanted distraction in the classroom.”

He said banning cell phones will help children make friends. She added that the policy would “restore social norms” and allow teenagers to spend more time talking to each other. She said Times Radio that “children will have to socialize,” when they will no longer be able to spend breaks playing on their phones. “They will have to have those conversations like they always have.”