Sarah Beeny requires the federal government to ban sensible units from faculties

Sarah Beeny has called for the government to ban smart devices from schools, saying they are ‘a distraction’.

The broadcaster, 52, appeared on Good Morning Britain alongside school governor Ana Vilhete, who said it’s important for children to learn how to be tech savvy.

Sarah, who revealed her breast cancer diagnosis in 2022 and, after gruelling chemotherapy treatment and a double mastectomy, was given the all-clear by doctors last April, looked fresh-faced and radiant for her appearance.

It comes after the presenter slammed her son’s £33,000-a-year private school, for making iPads a requirement for learning and their over-reliance on technology.

Government guidance in England says that schools should ‘prohibit the use of mobile phones’, but they are able to choose an approach which suits them.

Sarah said: ‘My concern is the tech is not appropriate for education because it is so distracting. Social media is really toxic for the younger generation, for developing minds, they don’t learn social skills. 

‘The confidence you learn from talking to someone face to face rather than retreating into a world which is not a humanised world. Everyone knows it’s not great for developing minds and you’re not learning social skills.

Meanwhile Ana disagreed saying schools can ‘utilise’ devices and learn how to become ‘tech savvy.’ 

Ana said: ‘As long as schools utilise the devices responsibly it’s absolutely fine. There are restrictions, there are websites and apps that children can utilise.

‘Children are only on the devices for a couple of hours a day, they won’t be on them from 9 to 3pm in the afternoon.’

Sarah added: ‘I am not against computers in schools, that would be ridiculous. But having owner-enabled devices in a school, which is either a smartphone or tablet, if you own it you take it home and you are carrying around something that is clearly addictive.’ 

Ana argued that it is important for children to learn how to be tech savvy, because ‘we live in a digital world.’ 

She added: ‘My last point is how about those children who can’t afford to have devices at home? How are they able to have any digital aptitude.’

People rushed to X, formerly known as Twitter, to leave their own views on the controversial topic. 

One person said: ‘Parents need to take responsibility, they gave their children the phones not the school so step up and be a parent!!!’

Another said: ‘Literally a world of knowledge at their fingertips. Would be more pragmatic to incorporate it into their lessons.’

Someone else said: ‘Pros and cons for both sides. There’s a safety aspect for parents and children to communicate when needed. Schools could possibly have a tray that phones are placed in on the teacher desk when entering a classroom. Teachers carry their phones too…’

A fourth wrote: ‘Children under 16 should only be allowed simple mobile devices that call & text. There is no need for a younger person to have a sophisticated mobile phone which gives them access & others access to them on things they do not understand. Social Media is the cause of many problems.’

It comes after Sarah slammed her son’s £33,000-a-year private school, for making iPads a requirement for learning and their over-reliance on technology.

The 52-year-old has described the dependence on technology as ‘really, really toxic’, expressing the idea that the incorporation of iPads at school has made it ‘impossible’ for the presenter to limit screen time at home.

Sarah has four sons Billy, 20, Charlie, 18, Rafferty, 14, and Laurie, 12, with artist husband Graham Swift. And all either attend or have previously attended before graduating, Millfield School in Somerset.

The property expert said: ‘That’s basically like asking someone to diet and then shoving the entire fridge full of cream doughnuts and saying, ‘Could you just meander and find the carrot at the bottom?’ and then expecting to use self-control.

‘And when they don’t use self-control you say, ‘Well, what is wrong with you?’ I don’t think you can pass it back to the parents.

‘People have said to me before ‘Why don’t you use parental controls?’ and I’m like, ‘well I’m at work, I’m really busy, and they can get around it anyway.”

Sarah’s distaste for the use of technology in schools continues further when she goes as far to say devices stopped children’s ‘brains developing’ and limited their social skills.

The Property Ladder presenter has called on schools, pressing them to impose tighter restrictions on devices in schools and said no child should be able to ‘look up a game’ on school-owned technology.

She added: ‘Pupils shouldn’t be able to do anything because it’s like a school textbook. You don’t have a school textbook and then stick Beano in the back of it, do you?’

The mother-of-four’s frustration comes from the concept of children in schools having access to things they shouldn’t on school-owned devices, arguing that it makes children less productive as they get distracted easier, provided they’re given a tablet to do their maths homework but then gets distracted and goes and uses social media like Snapchat and forgets all about the homework they were tasked with.

She went on to propose the idea that schools should not issue devices until they are responsible for the content on them, and children cannot download social media.

Schools can impose restrictions on devices such as smooth wall software that blocks certain types of content from being accessed, but children try to get around them and more and more children are becoming successful in bypassing these software systems.

Beeny relates to all parents, not just herself by expressing that the incorporation of technology in student learning affects all families as it makes it much harder to monitor the amount of time their children spend on technology daily.

In England, it is currently up to individual heads to decide policies on mobile phones and whether they should be banned. The guidance, which is non-statutory, instructs headteachers on how to ban the use of phones not only during lessons but during break and lunch periods as well. 

It offers four different policies that schools can adopt to enforce it, including banning phones from the school premises, handing in phones on arrival at school, and keeping phones securely locked away at school.

A fourth option allows pupils to keep hold of their phones, provided they are never used, seen or heard. Almost all children – 97 per cent – now have mobile phones by the age of 12, according to Ofcom.