Brianna Ghey’s mother calls for school smartphone ban

The mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey has said a ban on mobile phones in schools would have given her daughter “a better chance in life”.

Esther Ghey has written to the government to call for a statutory ban on phones in schools in a campaign backed by high-profile figures including actress Kate Winslet and actor Stephen Graham.

Her daughter had been “completely addicted” to her phone and was getting into trouble at school as a result, while trying to restrict her use had been a “constant battle”, she said.

Ms Ghey said she wanted funding for schools to lock phones in pouches through the school day after this had been a success at Brianna’s old school in Warrington.

During the three years Brianna was at Birchwood Community High School in Warrington, there were 120 safeguarding logs and 116 behaviour logs around her phone use, Ms Ghey said.

She told BBC Breakfast she would get “five phone calls a day from school from Brianna refusing to put her phone away, texting in classrooms, going to the toilets to film TikTok videos”.

“As a parent, I really felt like I was failing,” Ms Ghey added.

“I didn’t know what to do.”

In her letter to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and Prime Minister Keir Starmer she has asked for phones to be banned for the entire school day, unless a student is exempt for medical or accessibility reasons.

A government spokesman said schools already have the power to ban phones, adding that better protections have been brought in to protect children from harmful content through the Online Safety Act.

Ms Ghey said some children are showing others extreme porn and also “using phones to deal drugs in schools”.

She said: “It just goes to show that there is absolutely no place in school for these devices.”

Birchwood Community High School introduced pouches to lock phones last September and head teacher Emma Mills has previously said the affect has been “immense” in “every layer of school”.

In the system Birchwood uses, phones are locked in pouches on arrival at school, which are then carried around by the student rather than locked in another location.

If this had been in place for Brianna, “it would have helped her to focus on her school work”, Ms Ghey said.

She said: “She wouldn’t have been getting into so much trouble because all of the issues were around the phone use.

“She would have been able to focus on her education. She would have been able to make friends with her peers.

“I think that schools, parents and children need support from government, because this issue is just too big for anybody to handle on their own.”

Research from the Children’s Commissioner shows that 99.8% of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools already have policies restricting the use of mobile phones.

But Ms Ghey said: “The funding needs to be in place, because I’ve spoken to headteachers, and they’ve said sometimes it’s a choice between a new classroom assistant or the pouches, and headteachers shouldn’t have to make that choice.”

Ms Mills said pupils initially “hated” the idea of the pouches which stop them accessing their phone.

But they now have told her they are thankful as it gives them a “break from the stress” of social media.

The headteacher said pupils are more engaged and they talking more to each other as a result, adding GCSE pass rates have “sky rocketed” and attendance rates have improved.

Ms Mills said she wants all schools to benefit from the pouch system but hopes central government to fund the initial high costs of setting it up.

She said: “It shouldn’t be a postcode lottery to be fully engaged in your education.”

Ms Ghey said: “There’s so much harmful content [online],” adding a ban in schools was just “one part of the puzzle” in the approach to children’s phone and social media usage.

Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, both 15 at the time, lured Brianna to Culcheth Linear Park in Warrington where the 16-year-old was fatally stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife.

Jenkinson was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court in December 2023 to a minimum sentence of 22 years in prison, and Ratcliffe to a minimum term of 20 years.