Josh MacAlister

I thank the hon. Lady for her long-standing campaigning and support for these issues, including the work that she has done in her role as the Chair of the Education Committee. The source of the Government’s confidence in recommending this as the approach that all schools should take from September next year is that 39% of secondary schools are already, from within their existing budgets, able to implement a full ban, which means that young people are not taking phones around the school in the middle of the day. They have found a number of means of doing that, which include pouches. We will work closely with school leaders very closely to ensure that this is implemented effectively next September. The hon. Lady asked about the role of the certification process, and the deployment of AI tools and the need to ensure that they are effective. I completely agree with her description of the complicated landscape that headteachers and subject leads face when deciding what to use: that is exactly why we want the certification process to go alongside the trials and the evaluation work that we want to do, specifically on the use of AI tools in the classroom. We need to do that as quickly as we can, but, as the hon. Lady will know, the quality of these trials needs to be robust enough to provide schools with really clear guidance.