Dear backers,

Since we launched our legal challenge last September, the Government has been scrambling to keep up with the evidence that smartphones are causing grave harm to children.

The rollercoaster of announcements and policy changes has kept our legal team very busy, and we wouldn’t have been able to keep going without your support. 

There have been three remarkable developments affecting our case: 

1. The 2024 mobile phone guidance has been withdrawn. The new guidance on mobile phones in schools removes the ‘never used, seen or heard’ policy option. 

The rhetoric is very strong – Bridget Phillipson has told all schools in England that ‘mobile phones have no place in schools. No ifs, no buts.’ The new guidance prohibits 'access to', not just 'use of' mobile phones in schools.

2. Ofsted, the school inspectors in England, have been instructed to enforce this guidance. The head of Ofsted has said he will take this matter very seriously in the grading of schools.

3. The Government has published a draft update to Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) which would put this new guidance on a statutory footing for the first time.

The Government has also launched consultations on the KCSIE draft, and a huge national consultation called Growing up in the online world. 

Taken together, these developments significantly shift the dial. They are a remarkable achievement for the entire movement. 

What does this mean for our legal challenge? 

These developments fundamentally change the context of our legal case. Our challenge was to the lawfulness of the Government’s guidance, and the Government has decided to change the guidance. 

Because the Government has significantly changed its position and adopted a much more protective approach towards children’s use of smartphones, our lawyers are withdrawing our application for judicial review.

Judicial reviews cannot make government policy, and that is not their purpose. Given the scope and purpose of the judicial review process – within ‘what a JR can do’ – we have secured a very significant victory. 

• The legal landscape has significantly changed
• The national conversation has shifted
• We have exposed the harms that kids, like Flossie, are being exposed to up and down the country

We have spent some time thinking about the new guidance, and we know it is far from perfect. We’re both proud of our work and of these successes and disappointed by the lack of courage shown so far by the Government. 

Head teachers and school leaders up and down the country are scrambling to understand what this means for their own schools. Change is happening! But we think it is unfair that schools are being left to deal with this issue on their own.

What else can I do to help? 

1. Complete the KCSIE consultation

The KCSIE consultation is a huge opportunity to get a better version of the new guidance on a statutory footing. As one headteacher said to us last week, “if it’s in KCSIE, we do it.”

Go to the KCSIE consultation and fill in the mandatory information, then click ‘Next’ until you reach Questions 60 and 61. 

You can add something simple here, and if you want more ideas, we’ve written a document you can use. IT CLOSES VERY SOON, ON 22nd APRIL.

2. Complete the Growing up in the online world consultation

Complete the survey for parents, and near the end there are questions about the guidance on mobile phones in schools. You can say:

• Yes, it should be statutory
• Because of safeguarding (and any examples you want to add)

What’s next? A legal opinion from our counsel...

Given the new legal context, our counsel is preparing a statement on the implications of the new non-statutory guidance for children, parents and schools. Our plan is to make this available for everyone's benefit.

It is vital that schools are able to implement appropriate safeguarding policies that protect children from harm, and schools and staff from litigation.

We will announce this as soon as it’s ready, which we hope will be in about three weeks’ time.

Your contributions

Your pledges have funded intense work by our legal team. We don’t yet know if there will be any balance of funding left after seeking costs. If there is, we will propose to transfer it to a future case seeking to protect children. 

Thank you again

If you contributed to this case, you have helped protect the nation’s kids. 

The impact of the new guidance is now playing out in schools, and calls for better legislation to protect children are being debated in Parliament and across the country. 

We will be watching closely.

Pete, Will, Katie & Flossie

Last night, the Government made a huge announcement about social media and phones in schools.

Government to drive action to improve children’s relationship with mobile phones and social media (gov.uk)

"Immediate action will include Ofsted checking school mobile phone policy on every inspection, with schools expected to be phone-free by default thanks to today’s announcement."

On the face of it, this is a huge step in the right direction! The consultation, and the clear message from Ofsted in particular, is a watershed moment.

Where does this leave our legal challenge?

As you know, we filed our legal challenge on 10 November. The Government was due to outline its defence by 10 December. We can now reveal that, before Christmas, the Secretary of State applied to the High Court for more time to respond to our legal challenge. 

As we can see from last night's announcement, the Government has obviously been working on this policy area, and they have now committed to updating the guidance on phones in schools.

So... the Government has clearly accepted the strength of our case about the dangers of smartphones in a school context, and it’s great news that it has finally proposed radical action in order to protect children. However, until we see the new guidance, we won't know whether it will really go far enough to protect children while they're under the care of their school. 

What we can say for sure is this: every backer of our case has helped to change the future for the nation's children. Thank you!

We will keep everyone posted on the next steps.

Pete and Will

Wow, we did it — we've reached our target with one day to spare! 

Thanks to you, our legal challenge is now in great shape for a permission hearing. Thank you so much for all your pledges, especially if you pledged at this time of year.

We hope 2026 will bring us all some positive news! We really hope that the Government will just do the obvious and reasonable thing: fix the guidance, and protect the nation's children.

For now, we hope you have a relaxing Christmas filled with love, and we will provide an update on the next steps for the case in January. 

Happy Christmas! 

Pete & Will

A fellow dad has created a brilliant short video of Flossie’s BBC interview. Let's see how much we can raise by Tuesday in one last push! Thank you for all your messages of support, and please do share the video on your social media. 

And, we will share our news on the Government’s response to our initial Statement of Facts and Grounds just as soon as we're able!

Pete & Will

Twitter / X
https://x.com/willorrewing/status/2001251067636719812

YouTube
https://youtu.be/Cg3YAvVNCkg

Thank you so much for your pledges. We've now received an incredible £32,000 in individual pledges.

We feel optimistic. On Wednesday, our campaigning friends at Generation Focus attended an MP roundtable on smartphones in schools. A couple of hours later at PMQs, the Prime Minister said that the government is now keeping things "under review". This is significant, positive change. Watch the video below.

If we hit our target of 50k, CrowdJustice will release the funds to help us respond to the government's defence.

Please do share our page with parents, grandparents and on your social media!

Will & Pete

On Monday evening, we filed our judicial review claim at the High Court. A huge thank you to everyone who has donated so far! 

Flossie, along with Ciarán who is one of the brilliant witnesses in our case, appeared on the Good Morning Britain sofa yesterday morning. Flossie told Richard and Susanna how smartphones took away her childhood.

Ciarán sums it up: We will look back and say this was madness.

Please share this interview with parents and on your social media. They need to know what's actually happening in schools. 

It feels to us like a dam is breaking.

The BBC invited us to the Breakfast sofa, where Flossie explained to the nation why she is providing evidence to the High Court. Flossie was asked by the BBC producers to not describe the content she saw at school, because it it too horrific.