Northampton mum 'devastated and angry' after daughter exposed to explicit online content at school

A mother-of-three from Northampton has joined two fathers seeking to legally challenge government guidance on phones in schools.

Northampton mother Katie Moore, 43, has added her support to Will Orr-Ewing and Pete Montgomery's claim for a judicial review which seeks to have smartphones completely banned in schools.

Mrs Moore is also joining the claim after her daughter, now 18, told her she had been shown sexually explicit images in school changing rooms on phones, and once had been exposed to a video of men masturbating when another student accessed a video chatroom at school when she was around 13 or 14.

She told us she was "devastated" and "angry" to hear what her daughter had been exposed to online.

"Shocked, devastated and frustrated. Really actually quite angry that she had been exposed to that. It's so normalised that they get exposed to this kind of stuff."

She added she had tried to delay giving her daughter a smartphone as long as possible, but had felt pressure to give in when all her peers had one.

"Do you trust the parents of 2000 students to put parental controls on?"

Mrs Moore believes a complete statutory ban on phones at school is the only solution and said 'out of sight' policies for phone use in schools do not go far enough.

"Even where schools try and say they're banning smartphones with this not to be used, seen or heard policy, the fact that these students have got them in their bags and pockets, if they're in a place where there's no teachers around, it's very easy for them to get access to it."

Mrs Moore feels parents who really feel their children need a phone to contact them should look to non-internet so called 'brick' phones. She feels these are safer, as children are less likely to be distracted crossing roads, or be mugged for them.

She wants parents it's not just their own child's phone they need to consider:

"You will get parents saying, well I put my parent controls on, but do you trust the parents of 2000 students to put parental controls on? Because actually I was one of those parents who thought I was doing all of the right things and actually my daughter got exposed to horrific explicit content through other children's smartphones."

"I think if I hadn't had a phone, and if we didn't have phones in school, I wouldn't have been exposed"

A teenager from Devon has also backed the calls. Flossie McShea, 17, has joined as a claimant because she feels the Department for Education (DfE) has failed to protect her and other children from harms inflicted from phones during the school day.

She told the PA news agency using smartphones "completely changed my life from year 7 onwards" and that she still thinks about content she has been shown.

"I was exposed to pornography and violent videos, like beheading videos. I was sent a video of two young children who had found a gun and one of them accidentally shot the other one," Miss McShea said.

"I had to go home. There was a lot of incidents like that and a lot of my friends had the same experiences.

"All of this really happens at school because you can see live reactions. We're all gathered in this place, so people feel it's much more appealing to share this stuff online when you can get a reaction from 30 kids in the classroom.

"I think if I hadn't had a phone, and if we didn't have phones in school, I wouldn't have been exposed to things that I would not want to be exposed to."

Miss McShea's school has brought in a complete ban on smartphones on school premises.

"The other day I got on the school bus and a group of year 7s were laughing and chatting together. I felt so happy for them," she said.

"We never had that because we were just always looking down and scrolling."

Mr Orr-Ewing and Mr Montgomery, both parents of school-age children, wrote to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson in July to say they intended to challenge a mandatory school phone ban not being included in safeguarding guidance for schools.

They are pursuing the judicial review under an organisation they have set up called Generation Alpha CIC.

Lawyers lodged papers in the High Court on Monday 10 November.

Under the former Conservative government, schools were issued non-statutory guidance intended to stop the use of phones during the school day.

Phone use in schools

A survey by the Children's Commissioner earlier this year found 90% of secondary schools and 99.8% of primary schools already have policies in place to stop the use of phones during the school day.

The majority of secondary schools (79%) surveyed allowed pupils to bring phones in, but said it must stay out of sight and not be used. Only 3.5% said pupils were not allowed to bring phones to school.

In July, Mr Montgomery and Mr Orr-Ewing said they had made freedom of information requests to schools about phone and social media-related safeguarding incidents. They found that in one school's case, it had passed on 55 incidents to social services, 17 of which were referred to the police.

Mr Montgomery said getting smartphones out of schools is "a no-brainer".

"It should be the easiest decision in the world for the Government to take," he added. "But they haven't taken it, so we have no other option but to go to court."

What does the Government say?

A Government spokesperson said: "Phones have no place in our schools, and leaders already have the power to ban phones.

"We support headteachers to take the necessary steps to prevent disruption, backed by clear guidance, and have also brought in better protections for children from harmful content through the Online Safety Act."

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