Teenagers on smartphones, probably not reading about the National Party's plan to restrict the devices at school. Photo / Getty Images, File
Teenagers on smartphones, probably not reading about the National Party's plan to restrict the devices at school. Photo / Getty Images, File
Opinion
EDITORIAL
The eye-rolls from your local schools, principals, teachers and students who bothered to dial in to National’s mobile phone policy announcement this week would have almost been audible.
For those who missed it, the National Party has vowed in the sternest voice it could muster that, ifelected, it will ban students from using their phones at school.
However, says the party, it will ultimately be left up to schools themselves as to how such a policy is enforced.
In other words, everything can stay the same but, if the teacher wants to tell young Timmy to turn his phone off and put it in the box at the front of the class, the teacher can tell him that the Government says so.
National leader Christopher Luxon says his party wants to “turn around falling achievement” by eliminating “unnecessary disturbances and distractions”.
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
An informal online survey by nzherald.co.nz this week found 76 per cent of respondents in favour of the policy because phones are “a distraction to learning”.
It’s a sentiment that’s been spreading and rolling into official interventions. Queensland has banned all mobile phones and smart watches from all state schools from next year. Parents supported a mobile phone ban in New South Wales primary schools, while Victoria, South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia have similar restrictions for high schools.
But here, Papatoetoe High School principal Vaughan Couillault told AM that students having cellphones wasn’t an issue at his school. He said cellphones were actually sometimes appropriate to assist children in their learning such as when they needed to film themselves for a task.
Couillault said there were consequences in place for when students used their phones when they shouldn’t and there should be more focus on other issues, such as vaping.
The fact is, smartphones have been around for a while, and few people are new to them. There will be very few schools that haven’t set a smartphone policy and successfully controlled their use for some time.
The sad reality is that this policy will be popular with a sector of voters who do not go to school, nor have done so for decades. Quite what it has to do with them is hard to fathom but they will approve most heartedly anyway.
Meanwhile, schools, principals, teachers and students who wouldn’t have bothered to even discuss National’s big ban are dealing with more pressing matters.
Schools, for instance, are currently still grappling with implementing a new localised curriculum and have been delivered a brand new school “strategic plan” process.
Te Whakangārahu Ngātahi or Planning Together for Ākonga Success is a massive undertaking in which each school has to consult with every sector of its community to devise bespoke strategic objectives for the school. The objectives must not only “give effect” to the Treaty of Waitangi but must also demonstrate how they are doing that.
This must be done this year, to be set in place by January 1, 2024. It then expires and starts again in two years’ time when the next school boards are elected. Those new boards will begin the process over, to set a strategic plan for the next three years.
The initial “toolkit” provided to schools to get started on this novel process is 60 pages and, right now, many of those who are involved with schools are heads-down in this assignment.
Sure the mobile phone “ban” is but one of National’s education policies. The party also pledges to require all primary and intermediate schools to teach an hour of reading, an hour of writing and an hour of maths, on average, every day. This, and other policies, were outlined in the “Teaching the Basics Brilliantly” package released back in March.
Talking tough about confiscating things from people who don’t vote might seem petty until one realises the policy doesn’t do anything at all, except pander to those who cheer at such talk.
The appropriate use or not, of mobile phones would have been dealt with by all schools years ago.
Couillault is right, a better target would be getting a clamp on the rising distractions associated with vaping. In Australia, vapes containing nicotine can now only be purchased with a prescription.
Let’s hear more tough talk, and action, about preventing these devices from getting into the hands of students in the first place.
