{"id":680653,"date":"2026-01-07T20:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T20:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/680653\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T20:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T20:18:15","slug":"paul-givan-education-minister-backs-campaign-to-delay-childrens-smartphone-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/680653\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Givan: Education minister backs campaign to delay children&#8217;s smartphone use"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Charlotte Carson, who is also a teacher, said that a law restricting phones in school would stop individual principals having &#8220;to fight their own battle&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If we have legislation we&#8217;re not asking head teachers to fight battles with their parents or their communities,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A DE spokesperson said Givan &#8220;recently engaged in discussions&#8221; with the Smartphone Free Childhood group about their work. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The spokesperson said &#8216;The Parent Pact&#8217; initiative &#8220;empowers parents to work together to delay smartphone use, helping to reduce online risks and foster stronger connections both at school and at home&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The department has written to schools to make them aware of this initiative and provide more information on how they can get involved,&#8221; they added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charlotte Carson, who is also a teacher, said that a law restricting phones in school would stop individual&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-680653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115855668269342267","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}