MINISTER FOR EDUCATION Norma Foley has today launched the Government’s policy to encourage parents to avoid buying smartphones for primary school-aged children. 

She said the plan is “not a war on phones” and has been designed to facilitate and encourage parents to collectively and voluntarily agree to hold off on buying smartphones for their children. 

She said the use of smartphones is one of the issues that is always raised with her during visits to schools.

This is due to the access they allow to inappropriate sexual and violent content and the risk of cyberbullying. 

Guidelines drawn up by the Department of Education for parents are now available online and will be issued to all primary schools while resources will be rolled out to parent associations who wish to develop voluntary codes on smartphones. 

As part of the initiative, more funding is being provided to Webwise (an internet safety initiative funded by the EU and the Department of Education) to provide new web safety lectures for parents. 

The Minister said today that she is conscious we are just a number of weeks out from Christmas and that she would encourage people to be considerate when it comes to gift buying for children and to think “of all the other wonderful things that can be provided”.

The Minister drew a distinction between smartphones and regular phones and said she can understand why some parents may allow their children to have a regular phone because of safety concerns and so that they can keep in contact with them outside of school if needed.

‘distraction’ tactic 

Earlier today, Labour’s education spokesperson Aodhán Ó Ríordáin criticised the policy and said it was simply a “classic Fianna Fáil distraction’.

He said the minister should instead be focusing on the serious staffing issue in the education sector.

“Every school in the country already has a smartphone use policy,” Ó Ríordáin said.

“It’s a classic Fianna Fáil distraction from the actual issue of the day.

“If you have a school that can’t function as it’s at 45% capacity because you can’t fill teaching posts, and they get a circular from the Department about the use of smartphones by children? You’re going to be insulted by that, and you should be insulted,” he said.

When this was put to the Minister today, she said it’s the responsibility of the Department to tackle a lot of different issues. 

On the teacher shortages, the Minister said the Government has been “hugely proactive in this space”.

“I don’t for one minute deny that there isn’t an issue here,” she said. 

The Minister pointed to a new bursary for post-graduate students who wanted to study education, the introduction of upskilling courses and an increase of 600 additional teacher education places as examples of work the Department is doing to tackle the problem.

“Within the Department of Education, we focused on a variety of different issues.

“It’s important that we give – in this instance we’re speaking about smartphones today – that we do give priority to smartphones and that we do empower parents and we do facilitate them to make the right decisions for the benefit of their children, particularly in primary school,” the Minister said.