I KNOW THAT mobile phones in schools are impacting on our students’ wellbeing, their friendship and their ability to concentrate in the classroom.

That is why I am going to provide funding to secondary schools to provide mobile phone pouches or other storage solutions so that students are no longer glued to their phones during the school day.

As Minister for Education, I have introduced the policy of no access to mobile phones during the school day. I am now providing resources to deliver on this.

I am very conscious some schools have already demonstrated great innovation in their approach to keeping mobile phones at bay, including through the use of secure solutions where students’ phones can be stored and returned to them afterwards for their journey home.

There are magnetically sealed pouches that are available that a student can use to lock their phone when they arrive in school in the morning. At the end of the school day, the pouch can only be unlocked by touching the pouch against magnetic bases placed beside school exits. However, this is not uniform across all our schools.

Evidence from other countries

I have made the school-mobile phone free policy based on international research which has highlighted the negatives of having mobile phones available in the classroom and in school grounds.

Last year, a report by UNESCO, the UN’s education agency, recommended that smartphones should be banned from schools to improve learning and tackle classroom disruption and cyberbullying.

UNESCO cited evidence that removing smartphones from schools in Belgium, Spain and England was found to improve learning outcomes.

It noted that just having a mobile phone nearby with notifications coming through is enough to result in students losing their attention from the task at hand.

One study found that it can take students up to 20 minutes to refocus on their learning once distracted by the phone. The benefits of smart-phone free environments have also been highlighted by the OECD.

I know that concerns have been expressed that students will be able to get around the mobile phone pouches by putting in an old phone.

Of course, there will always be challenges and exceptions to any new policy. However, the prevailing atmosphere in the school will be one where mobile phones will not be accepted as the norm.

Every student will have their phone in a magnetically sealed pouch which is closed in the morning and opened in the evening. That will be the predominant experience within the school. Everybody will be equal.

Criticism

I have heard the criticism from opposition TDs about the cost of this scheme. I do understand that the €9m in funding for this scheme is a significant once-off investment.

However, secure, safe and lockable storage solutions such as pouches will be owned by the schools and can be reused into the future. When you break the cost down further, it works out at about €20 on average for each of our 400,000 students across more than 720 post-primary schools.

The funding for the scheme stands at less than 0.01% of the overall €11.8 billion education budget. I am aware there have been complaints that the money should have been given to schools to help them with their running costs.

But in this budget, I provided an extra €75 million in funding for schools. That includes an additional €30 million for schools in terms of capitation, which is the term for the state funding per pupil.

This is a 12% increase on top of a 9% increase last year, bringing the total capitation budget to more than €300 million. The budget funding also includes an additional €45 million in funding for schools from the cost-of-living package to give them further assistance with day-to-day running costs.

The education budget includes funding for 1,600 more special needs assistants, 768 more Special Education Teachers and free school books for all of our 940,000 pupils, with the final phase of the rollout of free school books to Senior Cycle students.

And that is not forgetting the extension of hot school meals to all primary schools by the government.

I firmly believe this mobile phone storage scheme will improve wellbeing, mental health and socialisation in our post-primary schools. It will help our young people to concentrate on their studies, whilst also having time to chat, make friends and engage in extracurricular activities without having to constantly check their phones.

Norma Foley is the Minister for Education and a Kerry TD.