Qld phone ban: Report compiled with zero input from schools

At the end of the first year of Queensland’s ban on mobile phones in schools, there’s been an extraordinary revelation on how it came about.

The school phone ban took effect this year under former Labor education minister Grace Grace.

The taxpayer-funded cyber-bullying report that sparked Queensland’s school phone ban was written without input from a single school, after researchers were snubbed by dozens of principals.

The Queensland Auditor-General revealed this week Education Queensland had engaged a university in 2023 to independently evaluate how well schools — public and private — were responding to cyber-bullying.

The report gave the department useful information on the design of policies related to cyber-bullying, but not on whether stakeholders thought they were effective, according to the Queensland Audit Office.

This is because principals of the schools approached did not give consent for their schools to participate so no responses were received.

It can now be revealed a total of 72 schools — a majority state schools — were approached by researchers and none responded.

Education Queensland confirmed the University of Queensland was paid $53,000 to undertake the cyber-bullying policy evaluation and the report was submitted in April 2023 after about 12 months of work.

UQ’s report to the department was a significant factor in the then-government’s highly-publicised decision, in July 2023, to ban mobile phones and smart watches during school hours from term one this year.

An Education Queensland spokeswoman, asked if it was acceptable that no schools responded, said participation in UQ’s survey was voluntary, and schools were not required to provide reasons for non-participation.

Queensland’s state school mobile phone ban began this year.

It is understood the timing of UQ’s work — around the end of 2022 — would have coincided with end of year exams and ongoing workload pressures related to Covid-19 and understaffing.

“The UQ report used several methods to review cyber-bullying responses. This included a literature review with a jurisdictional scan of national and international procedures and an in-depth review of the Department of Education’s policies and procedures,” the spokeswoman said.

“UQ approached 72 schools to participate in a survey. The schools were selected at random, and the breakdown consisted of 56 state schools, eight Catholic Schools and eight independent schools.

“The report has produced detailed findings and led to policy improvements, including the decision to ban mobile phones in state schools.”

The Audit Office report, released early this week, found cyber-bullying had skyrocketed 40 per cent in the last decade.

But the true extent of cyber-bullying in schools is unknown as Education Queensland doesn’t provide teachers and staff a specific way to log those incidents.

Overall there were 76,400 bullying incidents in 2023, with children affected from as young as Prep.

Of those, 7275 were cyber-bullying incidents — a staggering 41.4 per cent increase compared to a decade ago.

The Audit Office report on bullying found Education Queensland’s strategies for dealing with the issue were in line with best-practice, but the Department doesn’t have the “necessary measures and information” to know if the policies are effective.