The Government is working towards an outright ban on smartphones in secondary schools.
The Education Minister Norma Foley said the plan is an extension of the State’s current efforts to encourage parents to avoid buying smartphones for primary school children.
The Government approved plans last year to roll out resources to support parents in developing voluntary codes around smartphone use among primary school children.
Minister Norma Foley wants to look at an outright ban at second-level.
“Studies have shown that where mobile phones are not in use throughout the day in school it improves learning opportunities, it tackles classroom disruption and obviously the whole issue of cyberbullying is such an important one as well.
“We will be working with schools to support them in that regard, so that we would not have mobile phones in use during school hours [and] there would be a ban during the school day“.
A United Nations report last year called for smartphones to be banned in schools worldwide around concerns about their excessive use.
The UN’s educational agency UNESCO says the over-use of mobile phones impacts on learning.
