All regional governments have confirmed that next year the schools in their territories will be subject to restrictive regulations on the use of mobile phones in their schools, except for the Basque Country, which will leave freedom of choice to each school. The regulation goes along the lines adopted by Catalonia on Tuesday: prohibiting it in primary schools and turning it off throughout the school day in secondary and post-secondary schools.
This was the proposal that Minister Pilar Alegría had put forward, based on the recommendation of the State School Council, and that she put on the table with the autonomous communities yesterday. A meeting that “took place in a good atmosphere”, in which only the councilors of Catalonia, Asturias and Navarre were present, and which served “to verify the common interest of the educational community in giving an answer to this concern ”, according to a statement from the ministry. Executives governed by the PP sent their vice-advisors or secretaries there. They considered the meeting useless as it is a competition of an autonomous nature, which many communities have already exercised, such as Madrid, which banned mobile phones in the 2020-2021 academic year. Councilors want the minister to convene a Sectoral Conference and not a working meeting.
In any case, the Basque Government was the only executive that did not send a representative to the meeting called by Education, a position that obeys the decision of the Cabinet of Iñigo Urkullu to follow “its own road map”. The Department of Education, led by Jokin Bildarratz, already communicated two weeks ago that they are not betting on prohibiting the use of mobile phones in educational centers in general, but that they are considering leaving the development of specific regulations in the hands of each center .
Specifically, the Basque Administration will offer schools training on this issue so that, before the end of the year, they will have drawn up regulations that pay attention to it, which will have to be “consensus and addressed by the school council”. “Prohibiting is a word that we don’t like to use in Education”, stated the Deputy Minister of Education, Begoña Pedrosa.
Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Castile-La Mancha, Asturias, Galicia, Murcia, Madrid, Castile and León, Aragon, Ceuta and Melilla, in addition to Catalonia, have their own regulations, and some were approved after the Government put the initiative on the table on December 13.
There remain the Balearic Islands, La Rioja, the Valencian Community, Extremadura and Navarra, which have already expressed their intention to regulate it. For its part, Cantabria ordered educational centers in September to start the debate to regulate mobile phones.
After the ministry’s proposal, councilor Sergio Silva expressed his intention to join the common position and establish a regulatory framework for schools in his community to limit it. Cantabria is redefining its digital plan in schools and plans to remove screens and projectors from the classrooms of students under 8 years old.
