There can seldom have been a time when the in-tray of an education secretary has been quite as overflowing as it must be right now - what with a pandemic, cancelled exams, and what to do about education recovery.

So it may come as a surprise that, amid all this big policy stuff, Gavin Williamson is oddly vexed about mobile phones.

Here’s what he said in his speech at the Confederation of School Trusts’ conference on Wednesday: “One thing I am absolutely convinced about is that every school should be mobile-free. 

“Mobile phones are not just distracting, but when misused or overused, they can have a damaging effect on a pupil’s mental health and wellbeing. This is not acceptable. I therefore fully support headteachers who ban mobile phones from the school day. 

“We are going to be consulting on how we can help more heads remove phones from the school day, alongside other revisions to the behaviour and discipline and expulsions guidance, later on in the year.”

Gavin Williamson’s odd fixation on mobile phones in schools

This fixation on phones is odd, not only because it introduced a brake-screeching moment in a speech that was about expanding multi-academy trusts, but also because it seems to be addressing a problem that exists for almost no one - except perhaps a secretary of state seeking to throw some cheap red meat to the backbenches.

Anybody hearing Gavin Williamson’s words might have concluded that our schools and colleges are in the grip of some form of mobile-phone anarchy.

But if the secretary of state had a look at his own department’s snapshot survey in 2018, he would find that this is not the case. On page 62, we see that some schools ban them altogether, some require them to be left in a particular place, some allow pupils to carry them but not to use them, and some allow pupils to use them at specified times.

It is hard to see what’s getting the secretary of state’s goat. Perhaps he has in his sights those schools that allow the use of mobile phones at specified times (29 per cent of secondaries, and 1 per cent of primaries). But this is obviously a controlled approach rather than a free-for-all. 

And, frankly, what on earth is the secretary of state trying to achieve by plunging into the micro-detail of school policies? Can you imagine the health secretary advising a surgeon on the best way to carry out a hip replacement?

The government hasn’t got any big ideas at all

What’s really worrying about this, however, is that it suggests the government hasn’t got any big ideas at all. The secretary of state’s speech set out, in his words, “an ambitious vision” for every school to be part of a multi-academy trust. But, regardless of whether or not this is a good idea, what followed was conspicuously short of any actual policy initiatives other than some fairly minor technical tweaks.

That’s not to say there isn’t a system problem that needs to be addressed. The current pick-and-mix structure of schools from which Mr Williamson wants to break away is the product of the government’s own chaotic approach to academisation. 

Whatever your views on academies - and I was one of the most vehement early critics - most of us can probably agree that now, all these years on, it might have been a good idea for the government to have planned educational provision in some vaguely coherent way.

Such coherence would be in the interest of our pupils and communities, and could certainly bring cost benefits from groups of institutions, including pupil referral units and special schools, all working together to drive a range of quality education through collaboration rather than competition, underpinned by robust governance arrangements.

Or, to put it more simply: groups of schools working together is a sensible idea.

But, in his speech, we didn’t get anything as clear as that. Instead, the substance of the secretary of state’s speech was merely an attempt to sort out an earlier government mess, rather providing a rational vision for evidence-based reform, based on the best of our recent past.

And, in truth, we can’t go on with such fragmentation. As a society, we simply must improve the prospects for our most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people. 

We know that educational gaps first appear very early in children’s lives - so it is absolutely obvious that we have to put more investment into early years education. 

Similarly, we know that, in order to provide educational equity, we have to do more to support schools that face the greatest challenges. And it is also obvious that our current qualifications system really doesn’t work for all our students, and needs to be reformed in some way.

Unfortunately, the focus on peripheral matters such as mobile phones suggests the government has no such ambition. What seems likely is that the post-pandemic approach to education will be very similar to the pre-pandemic approach: empty rhetoric and managerial tinkering, a moment of missed opportunity that defaults to the recent past.

And I suppose this isn’t entirely Mr Williamson’s fault. We have a prime minister who likes big, shiny capital projects, and a Treasury that doesn’t appear to think that education spending is a priority. 

All of which leaves Mr Williamson huffing and puffing ever more loudly in a parochial and unnecessary mobile-phone debate, when he could be putting in place the small number of reforms needed to lift education from the rhetoric of being “world-class” to the reality. 

Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders