I am a bit worried about Gavin Williamson. 

It wasn’t that long ago that he was offering pearls of behavioural wisdom as some naïve cure-all, and now here he is again - focused, driven - on a new warpath and this time he is brandishing the micromanagement stick. 

Poking away where he is neither wanted nor needed. Picking the scab of good conduct. And, just for good measure, he has thrown in the recurring nastiness of the mobile phone, raising its head once more, like infected acne. 

Now, it wasn’t that long ago that I myself wrote about mobile phones: a swift mention of the much-hated thorn in Sir Michael Wilshaw’s side. I wonder if Gavin read that and thought to himself, “Hey, I need some inflammatory material to keep me in with the backbenchers. Thanks, Zoë!” I like to think he did. 

Why is Gavin Williamson obsessed with mobile phones in schools?

Based on his recent foray into the world of behaviour management, I wonder if Gavin might have been taking part in some mid-range CPD. 

You know the kind of thing: the “expert” stands at the front and hands out the Post-it notes, and asks you to do all the work. Then they tell you to have a discussion about it among yourselves for 15 minutes, while they have a coffee. Then they get you to stick your ideas up on the whiteboard for everyone to read, while they stand there feeling smug that they have earned several hundred pounds while you have been emptying your brain on to yellow paper. 

This seems to be Gavin’s current strategy: having the germ of an idea, but not the energy or ability to take it any further than an opening gambit. 

So his best option seems to be to ask other people what they think, and then collect in all the ideas, to be spewed back at some stage, probably in a 400-page document. Making schools do what they have already been doing, except they have to do it officially as a government directive, and probably with some additional meetings and student-voice activities and letters home to parents. 

Because this is the thing. As many recent comments, tweets and Facebook posts have already established since this story broke, all schools have mobile-phone policies and behaviour policies. No one is ignoring this. There is a vast amount of awareness and action going on.

Choosing to focus on the peripheral issues

Don’t get me wrong: sharing good practice is a hugely useful and worthy exercise. Teachers do it every single day. We are experts at sharing good practice and generous in our willingness to support and encourage each other. 

But the suggestion that schools are not tackling mobile-phone use is patronising and the implication that mobile phones are at the epicentre of behaviour problems is shortsighted - a knee-jerk reaction. 

Being a naturally inquisitive person (some might say suspicious - cynical, even), I cannot help but wonder what this sudden interest in mobile phones is diverting our attention from. The fact that education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins resigned in protest at the lack of funding, leaving us high and dry without the promised catch-up provision, maybe? 

Choosing to focus on a peripheral issue, rather than to tackle the more elemental aspects that our education system needs right now, is a bit like wearing a thin, floaty summer dress without a decent petticoat on underneath. You can see right through it. 

For Gavin’s sake, I hope he gathers in all those hints and tips from the teaching community that he has asked for, and sticks them all over his office. I hope he reads every single one, all by himself, and then realises what a noble and knowledgeable bunch of people we are. 

Then I hope he turns his full attention to the underlying big, grown-up bits of work that he has to do, and puts his phone on silent while he does it.  

Zoë Crockford is a secondary art teacher in the South West of England