School kids across Canberra will be allowed to bring their mobile phones into class for the foreseeable future, as the ACT Government has no plans to ban them.
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ACT education minister Yvette Berry confirmed that banning mobile devices in Canberra public schools was not on the cards, days after her federal and NSW counterparts called for smartphones to be kept out of Australian classrooms.
Behind her, a different kind of device was being handed out to students across Canberra public schools - brand-new Chromebook laptops, complete with internet access, long-life batteries and shatter-proof screens.
The Chromebooks - 15,000 of them to be delivered to high school students over the next three weeks - are part of a 2016 Labor election commitment.
Ms Berry was speaking on Tuesday at Kingsford Smith School in the northern suburb of Holt, where some of the first Chromebooks were being distributed to high school students, who wasted no time firing them up and logging online.
She said the computers would not only put every student on equal footing, but would also free up time for teachers who would otherwise have to become "an expert across a number of devices".
"Also, it takes that worry away for the parents around the financial decisions they might have to make or the decision about what device to actually bring to the school," she said.
But despite federal education minister Simon Birmingham's assertion that mobile phones should be locked away during school hours, she said phones were just one of many devices that needed to be incorporated into modern life.
"I know that a number of teachers in different schools use devices in different kinds of ways, whether that's iPhones or Chromebooks in the classroom," she said.
"Importantly it's about how those are used, it's not the devices themselves. I'm not sure that going ahead and just banning [smartphones] in school is the best way to go without having a conversation with the school communities about how those devices are used as part of their child's learning."
She said online interactions and safety were firmly part of the Australian curriculum.
"The ACT Education Directorate is required under the Australian curriculum to deliver classes on safety, around respectful relationships, not only in our personal lives but also across social media, in texting, all of those sorts of spaces," she said.
"This is a part of our life now, so we need to build an understanding with our young people about what's appropriate behaviour both on and offline."
