PARENTS believe children need them for safety, and teenagers would rather lose a limb than give them up.

But mobile phones have no place in schools.

It shouldn’t be such a tricky issue. Pupils have sat in classrooms for centuries without mobile phones and managed perfectly well, so why are they now seen as so vital?

I have never understood why they ever been allowed, with the easy access to the internet - which I am sure pupils use to answer questions - and the distraction of incoming calls and social media.

In some parts of the UK pupils have used them to film staged classroom incidents and posting them on the internet in an effort to embarrass and humiliate staff.

Apart from its function as a fast means of communication in a family crisis or to arrange pick up times - and there is always the school office staff who can help with such matters - there are no advantages to having a mobile phone in school.

In fact, I could never understand why pupils wanted the take phones to school particularly older pupils, who have saved for months to buy the latest model at a king’s randsom. The risk of losing it, breaking it, or having it stolen, would have put me off.

It should not be difficult to implement a ban. The secondary school once attended by my daughters doesn’t allow them until sixth form, and even then pupils can only use them at lunchtime.

I applaud Government culture secretary Matt Hancock, who has said that head teachers should ban mobiles in the classroom. As he rightly says, they can impact on a pupil’s learning and achievement. He also lined social media with bullying among children.

The French have already seen the light, and in September mobiles will be banned from primary, junior and middle schools.

I think it should go further. It’s when children are older, in their early teens, that the real problems linked to social media kick in. It’s then when pupils become obsessed with their phones, checking them ten million times a day. And it’s then when image-related issues come to the fore, and pupils become far more interested in how many likes their profile picture receives than how much they score in their maths exam.

Pupils of any age should be able to handle life without mobile phones. They may even find that, as adults, in the workplace, some employers may insist on phones being turned off or even confiscated. In one job, my youngest daughter had to hand in her phone at the beginning of her shift.

I’d hate to be a teacher in a class filled with children whose minds were elsewhere. And that’s happens with mobile phones. Whether they are flashing up images or silently vibrating in pockets. They are a major distraction. I know how hard it is to get the attention of my own mobile-addicted children, and many a time I have snatched away their phones in frustration.

Now, in schools at least, the tide appears to be turning. The chief inspector of Ofsted Amanda Spielman said last month that schools that ban mobile phones will get full backing from the regulator.

She believes the arguments for having phones in schools are 'dubious at best' and phones make life 'miserable' for teachers trying to deliver lessons.

She says her inspectors will support all heads who refuse to let phones on school premises in a drive to improve behaviour and crack down on ‘low level disruption' in the classroom.

This is great news. It’s a relatively simple rule to impose. Everyone benefits. But why has it taken so long?