Tories’ Rallying Call to Ban Phones in Schools: How Sheffield Schools enforced their own bans long ago, and how others could follow   
Ben Simpson
11 October 2025
Multiple phones placed on a table

Shadow Education secretary Laura Trott has intensified her calls this week for a nationwide ban on mobile phones in classrooms.

Trott believes that the current non statutory guidance isn’t enough, telling a Conservative conference on Tuesday that they have a “blueprint to improve discipline”, and insisting Education secretary Bridget Phillipson to go forward with it.

The former treasury minister has compared the damage of social media usage in schools to that of cigarettes and alcohol, denoting that her own children won’t be receiving a smartphone until they are 16.

While Phillipson has previously insisted that phones are “disruptive and distracting”, she believes that school’s have their own duty to enforce the current guidelines to protect the welfare of their students.

A school in Sheffield decided to take matters into their own hands last September, banning mobile phones, smartwatches, and even headphones indefinitely from their campus.

Forge Valley School in Malin Bridge, Sheffield, also enforced a rule stating that if they were caught with a device, it would be returned to them at the start of the next day.

In an interview with the BBC, Headmaster Dale Burrowclough said that the kids were “glued to their mobile phones”, unaware of their surroundings and “zombie-like”, prompting the school to take action.

More schools in Yorkshire have also used preventative measures to crackdown on mobile phone usage for their pupils.

Firth Green Academy, Sheffield, introduced a system last December in which sealable phone pouches, called Yondr pouches, would be used at the start of the day, and unlocked at the end, to lower pupil usage.

Ofcom said that nine in ten children will have smartphones by the age of 11, with an alarming 75% of parents feeling that they were worried about their child seeing content inappropriate for their age, according to a 2023 report.

In a more recent report published in May, more than seven in ten parents are concerned that their child wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the fake and the real, with an increase in younger children using phones and social media, a policy that Trott is pushing to monitor carefully.

While a ban isn’t looking likely as of now, it’s not the first time that the Conservatives have mounted pressure on the topic, and it certainly won’t be the last.