Education Minister Anna Brychan says she “fully supports” headteachers who want to restrict phones across the whole school site, as new research reveals the scale of teacher frustration.
Mobile phones in Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire classrooms face a fresh clampdown, after the Welsh Government confirmed it will issue new statutory guidance on how schools handle them during the school day.
The move comes as a survey of the education workforce found more than eight in 10 staff want ministers to go further and bring in statutory restrictions on pupils using phones.
Anna Brychan, the Plaid Cymru Cabinet Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, said she had “listened to the calls for stronger clarity” on the issue.
The guidance will set out clear national expectations for how phones are used within the school day. It will be evaluated over the coming school year, with the option to toughen it further if needed.
Ms Brychan, who represents Caerdydd Penarth in the Senedd, went further in backing schools that want to act now.
“I fully support — and strongly encourage — headteachers to introduce clear and robust restrictions on mobile phone use during the school day, up to and including a full restriction across the school site,” she said.
She added that some children would always need exceptions, for medical reasons for example.
The announcement lands the day after the UK Government unveiled plans to block under-16s from social media apps, a proposal that has already sparked heated debate among parents across the area.
The statutory guidance was shaped by a survey of teachers, senior leaders and support staff carried out earlier this year. In total, 410 people responded from across Wales, including 53 from Swansea, 11 from Carmarthenshire and five from Neath Port Talbot.
The findings paint a picture of schools already cracking down, but doing so in wildly different ways.
Two-thirds of those who replied (66.3%) said their school had a formal written phone policy. The most common approach was to allow phones on site but ban their use during the school day, reported by just under half of respondents.
But enforcement was patchy. While 55.7% said their policy was applied very or mostly consistently, the rest admitted it was only somewhat consistent, or worse.
Staff overwhelmingly backed tighter rules. More than eight in 10 (82%) said the Welsh Government should bring in statutory restrictions, rather than leave decisions to individual schools.
Many said the same thing in their own words: that a single national rule would end the confusion and arguments caused by every school doing something different.
“If everyone has the same policy then kids can’t complain,” one respondent said. “Parents and pupils would understand where they stand.”
Teachers reported real benefits from existing restrictions. Around three-quarters (74.6%) said their approach had cut distraction in lessons, while a majority pointed to better behaviour, less bullying and improved pupil wellbeing.
The picture was more mixed on staff workload. Almost one in five (18.5%) said managing phones had actually made their jobs harder, through rule-related conflict and the admin of collecting and storing devices.
The biggest headache was getting pupils on side. More than half (54.1%) said limited support from students was a challenge when putting their approach into practice, and a similar number cited inconsistent enforcement.
Researchers stressed the survey was open to anyone in the education workforce who wanted to take part, so the results are not a statistically representative snapshot of every teacher in Wales.
Responsibility for phone rules currently sits with individual schools and governing bodies, with headteachers free to restrict or ban devices under their behaviour policies.
That is the system ministers now want to wrap tighter national expectations around, stopping short of the outright Wales-wide ban the First Minister ruled out last month.
The debate has been building locally for months, with a packed public meeting in Swansea hearing parents’ fears about social media, and the city’s MP calling an emergency meeting on the issue.
The new guidance is expected to be in place for schools ahead of the next academic year.
