School mobile phone ban instruction expected today

Following a debate held in the Parliament of Andalusia last week, it is expected that today, Monday, the instruction from the conclusion will be sent to all Andalusian educational centres to limit the use of mobile phones during “the entire school day”.

The measure will provide greater legal security, clarity and homogeneity to all Andalusian educational centres. To date, many management teams resorted to the Organisation and Operation Regulations.

The Organic Regulation of Secondary Education Institutes, approved by Decree 327/2010, of July 13, is the one that regulates aspects related to students and families, with teachers, with administration and service personnel and with the organisation, operation and evaluation of secondary education institutes. This document is based on the principle of pedagogical, organisational and management autonomy of institutes and is the one in which many management teams included measures to limit the use of mobile phones in their classrooms.

For example, the IES Palomares, in the province of Seville, regulates in chapter 1 “the organisation and regulation of the use of telephony, electronic devices and network access.” In it, it develops everything related to telephony and prohibits “the possession of mobile phones in the centre by students” and warns that “improper use of electronic devices by students will imply” the reprimand “in writing with the corresponding part of discipline. It also points out that “students will be able to use the centre’s telephone in case of a health problem or other urgent matter,” but that “it will not be used for families to bring students any material forgotten at home.”

The intention now is that, respecting the autonomy of the centres, there are common standards. The Minister of Educational Development and Vocational Training, Patricia del Pozo, reported that there will be exceptions “when teachers need to use this teaching resource with students on certain occasions” and “in exceptional circumstances in which the student needs to carry the mobile phone with them”.

The objective is to “facilitate” and “give greater guarantee” to management teams when limiting the use of mobile phones within the school. “It is about providing security, guarantee, backing and support to the entire educational community in limiting the use of mobile phones during the school day,” explained Del Pozo.

“It is a response to a cry, not only from the educational community, but to a cry from the entire society, to limit the use of mobile phones,” she added.

The mobile phone can be “a great teaching resource” but “its misuse leads to distraction, situations that are not desirable, isolates our students” and “they are not recommended within the educational centre in those terms”, she explained.

The problem that many teachers have detected in the centres goes further and many students use them to record classmates without consent with the consequent legal responsibility that entails as they are minors. Likewise, they can be used for episodes of harassment of students or to interrupt the normal development of classes in the classrooms.

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