Will you be banning mobile devices?

Who’s feeling brave? Ofsted boss Sir Michael Wilshaw is looking for heads who have the courage to stand up and ban mobile phones. I won’t be joining that queue.

Nor, come to that, will I be taking the tablets away. There I’m misquoting the Times headline reporting the view, forcibly expressed by Tom Bennett, founder director of ResearchEd and recently-appointed government behaviour tsar, that we should stop handing out tablets and iPads to kids, because most of them will be checking on the size of Kim Kardashian’s backside instead of diligently researching the political background to the First World War.

Mobiles, iPads and tablets are frequently a curse. When kids are surfing porn-sites on those expensively provided tablets, or using their phones to sext, bully, transmit pictures of their less desirable parts, or merely complain about teachers, I wish I had a heavy hammer to hand and could smash every device within reach.