As of 29 June 2026, government guidance prohibiting mobile phone use through the school day is statutory in England. A plain-English explainer of what changed, when, who it covers, and what it means for schools and families. Kept descriptive, not campaigning.
England now has statutory guidance on mobile phones in schools. The Department for Education first published non-statutory guidance in February 2024; a revised version was published on 19 January 2026, became statutory on 29 June 2026, and schools are expected to be following it from 1 September 2026. The guidance requires schools to develop, implement and maintain a policy that prohibits the use of mobile phones during the school day. It applies to maintained schools, academies, free schools and non-maintained special schools in England, and it does not extend to post-16 institutions.
Two things the headlines often blur. First, "prohibits use" is not the same as "phones confiscated at the gate": schools choose their own method, from never-brought, to handed in, to kept away and never used. Second, this is an England policy; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own school guidance. This page tracks the position as it develops and carries a visible last-updated date, because a stale policy page is worse than none.
Primary source
Department for Education. Mobile phones in schools · gov.uk/government/publications/mobile-phones-in-schools
| Date | What happened | Status | Scope |
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Last reviewed: 13 July 2026
The core requirement is that schools develop, implement and maintain a policy prohibiting the use of mobile phones in school, covering the whole school day including break and lunchtimes. The Department has published accompanying material alongside it: communication guidance for explaining the policy to parents, and case studies from primary and secondary schools that had already gone phone-free. Schools retain discretion over exemptions, most obviously where a pupil needs a phone for a medical condition, and over enforcement methods.
Worth stating plainly for any parent reading: the rules govern the school day. What happens at home remains entirely a family decision, which is where the rest of this site comes in.
England is not an outlier. UNESCO's 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report described school smartphone bans as a spreading global policy trend, driven by classroom distraction and pupil wellbeing, and noted that the debate had moved from a handful of national initiatives to a widespread one. France legislated a school phone ban for pupils up to age 15 as early as 2018, and a growing list of countries and regions have followed with bans or restrictions since. The direction of travel across systems is consistent, whatever position one takes on it.
Key reference
UNESCO (2023). Global Education Monitoring Report: Technology in education, a tool on whose terms? · unesco.org/gem-report/en/technology
For schools, the work between now and September is policy drafting, parent communication and enforcement design, and the DfE's case studies are the most useful starting point because they come from schools that have already run the change. For families, the more interesting effect may be indirect: a school day without phones tends to surface the question of what evenings and weekends look like. If your child is about to experience six phone-free hours a day and you are curious what the overall picture now adds up to, our screen time reality checker takes thirty seconds and stores nothing.
For journalists: this page is kept updated and you are welcome to cite it. Background, key facts and contact details are on our press page.
The precise position: statutory guidance, in force since 29 June 2026, requires schools to have and maintain a policy prohibiting phone use during the school day. Schools implement it through their own behaviour policies rather than a single criminal-law style ban, and they choose the method of restriction.
No. The guidance does not extend to post-16 institutions. Sixth forms attached to in-scope schools should check the guidance and their trust's interpretation for how the boundary is drawn.
This guidance covers England. The devolved nations set their own school policy and several have issued their own guidance or backed head teachers' restrictions; we will add sourced entries for each nation to the timeline as we verify them.
In-scope, though in practice most primaries already operated no-phone rules. The visible change lands hardest in secondaries, where bring-but-never-use and hand-in models were previously the most common approaches.
On gov.uk, linked at the top of this page and from every row of the timeline. If you spot an error or a development we have missed, the contact route on our press page reaches a human.
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