Mobile phone confiscations within schools (FOI)

​​Request

A

Please advise how many children have been disciplined over the use of mobile phones during class at island secondary and primary schools in the past year.

B

Please confirm haw many times teachers have confiscated mobile phones?

C

Please advise if there any data on bullying at island schools involving mobile phones or social media?

Response

A to C

This information is not held in a recordable format; therefore Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.

All Government of Jersey schools will have their own mobile phone and acceptable conduct policies which can be found on their websites. 

Link to Primary School websites:

Primary schools (gov.je)

Link to Secondary School websites:

List of secondary schools (gov.je)​

Article applied 

Article 3 - Meaning of "information held by a public authority"

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

​Internal Review Request

I would like an internal review of this please. 

This Freedom of Information request is asking for details on:

How many children, if any, have been disciplined over the use of mobile phones during class at island secondary and primary schools in the last 12 months for the following schools?

• ​Bel Royal School
  
• St Lawrence School
  
• Bel Royal School
• d'Auvergne School 
  
• First Tower School 
• Grands Vaux School
• Grouville School
• Janvrin School
• Jersey College Preparatory School
• La Moye School
• Les Landes School
  
• Mont Nicolle School
• Plat Douet School
• Rouge Bouillon School 
• Samares School
• Springfield School 
• St Clement's School
• St John's School
• St Luke's School
• St Martin's School
• St Mary's School
• St Peter's School
• St Saviour's School
• Trinity School
• Victoria College Preparatory School 
• Beaulieu Primary Convent School
• De La Salle Primary School
• FCJ Primary School
• Helvetia House School
• St Christopher's School 
• St George's Preparatory School
  
• St Michael's Preparatory School
• Grainville School
• Haute Vallée School
• Hautlieu School
• Jersey College for Girls School
• Le Rocquier School
• Les Quennevais School
• Mont a L'Abbe School
• Victoria College 

This is data that each of these schools will have on file and so I would like it, please. 

Internal Review Response

This review has been completed by two senior staff members of the Government of Jersey, independent of the original decision-making process.

The original response has been reviewed and assessed to identify whether exemptions had been applied correctly and whether it was appropriate to withhold information.

The panel was asked to consider whether:

• the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been properly applied and whether the information requested genuinely falls within the exemption(s) cited 
• there were any other options available in order to respond to the request
• it is possible to provide any further information, and 

They will also provide an outcome of the internal review by stating whether:

• the original decision is upheld, or 
• the original decision is reversed in part or in full, or 
• the original decision is modified

Has the exemption been properly applied?

The exemption cited was Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, which states:

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

As the information requested is not held in a recordable format, Article 3 is relevant in this case. 

Having reviewed the definitions as stated in the relevant legislation, it was agreed that the application of Article 3 was appropriate, as information is not held in a recordable format. A Scheduled Public Authority is not required to create new datasets nor manipulate existing datasets in order to respond to Freedom of Information requests.

Were there any other options available? 

Schools record behaviour data within the School Information Management System ‘SIMS’, and the data is available for the Children Young People, Education and Skills ‘CYPES’ Informatics team to query and report upon. However, due to the differences in behaviour management, there is significant variation in the nature and number of behavioural incidents recorded across schools. Schools have their own behaviour management policies, and therefore have the facility to create behaviour classifications in SIMS that suit their needs.  The use of mobile phones, as a category, is not recorded within behavioural incidents consistently across Government of Jersey schools. Therefore, the data does not exist in the requested format.  

The alternative to retrieving this information would be to access each behavioural incident across schools to determine which incident related to mobile phone use. The time necessary to identify and extract the data set requested would exceed the timescales prescribed in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Therefore, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 could also have been relevant and applied to this response. 

Is it possible to provide any further information?

A review of the behaviour records freetext comments shows that mobile phone incidents could be captured under various classifications/sub-classifications including (but not limited to) “Confiscation”, “Use of Mobile Phone”, “Inappropriate Use of Device”, “Disruptive Behaviour”, “Other”, “Telephone Use (Inappropriate)”, “Not following school expectations”.  On reviewing these categories, it was clear that whilst some incidents related to mobile phones, there were other records that did not, for example ‘confiscation’ included items that were not mobile phones.

A keyword search of the freetext comments considered the use of keywords such as “phone”, however, it was identified that this included comments that were not relevant to this FOI, such as “phone call home”.

​Therefore, it was not possible to extract any meaningful data in response to this Freddom of Information request.

Outcome

It was agreed that exemption Article 3: Information held by a public authority, was appropriately applied. 

The internal review also reviewed other exemptions that may have been applied. The outcome would have remained the same, in that no information could have been released. 

Both Article 3 and Article 16: A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive, were appropriate in this case, as sufficient justification exists in favour of each exemption. The original response was therefore upheld. 

Articles applied 

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.