An independent research team from the University of West England in Bristol have been commissioned by the States Education and Public Health teams to carry out the survey.
‘Generally over the last 12 to 18 months or so there has been increased interest nationally and internationally as well as locally about what is happening with young people and smartphones, and we don’t have any local data,’ said health, personal development and partnerships officer for education, Rachel Sykes.
‘When we heard about the study that UWE had done last year, we were really interested in their findings and the way they approached it, by asking school staff as well as students and parents all in the same study.’
The survey is for students in years 7 to 11 at both States schools and the grant-aided colleges, and parents, carers and school staff.
‘We want to know about the current phone policies in schools, how they’re applied, how easy it is to enforce them, but also what people’s preferred policy might be,’ Ms Sykes said.
‘We want to know the experiences of children so we can compare those to what adults think.
‘We’ll see what the results are, we can’t preempt anything, but the more responses we get, the more robust that information will be.’
The results of the survey will help to inform future conversations and discussions.
Jenny Cataroche, head of the Public Health intelligence team, said her team was interested in findings across the whole digital technology scene, and would look to balance the benefits of technology with a focused learning environment.
‘There are crossovers,' she said.
‘Some research will be focusing on the impacts of social media, some about screen use and smartphones, and it all goes hand in hand,’ she said.
‘Specifically we’ll be asking questions about phone use, but it’s not just for parents of children who are using smartphones.
'Some families will have made the decision not to get smartphones for their children so we want to hear from them as well.
‘Even if people think they don’t have strong views on it, we want them to do it anyway so we have as wide a range of views as possible.’
There will also areas to talk about parental smartphone use, the use of smartphones in the home, and views on parental controls on children’s smartphones.
The survey will be open for about a month and the team from UWE is expected to turn around the results before the end of the school year.
It will be sent out on the platform each school typically uses to communicate with parents and carers.
All responses will be anonymous.
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