New minimum standard for use of personal electronic devices in schools

The Victorian Government has made new a new minimum standard for school registration. All schools must restrict student use of personal electronic devices in school hours.

The requirements schools must comply with are set out in a Ministerial Order No. 1515. They include having policies and procedures in place to ensure:

• mobile phones and smart glasses are turned off during school hours and stored in a way that restricts access to them
• wearable devices, such as smartwatches, have notifications, cellular connection and recording functions turned off during school hours
• personal audio devices such as headphones and earbuds are not used during school hours.

These restrictions have been introduced to reduce health, safety and privacy risks, and unnecessary distraction in the classroom.

Schools can provide exemptions on mobile phones, wearable devices and personal audio devices for learning, health and wellbeing reasons, or to manage risks related to students being offsite.

Exemptions can only be granted for smart glasses if they are a reasonable adjustment for a student with disability, and that adjustment cannot be reasonably provided by another device or approach.

Policies and procedures to comply with Ministerial Order No. 1515 must be in place by 28 January 2027. However, existing schools will not need to demonstrate compliance until their next scheduled review after 1 July 2027.

Schools can update their existing policies and procedures on personal electronic devices to comply with these requirements, or a new template policy is available.

If using the template policy, it must be adapted to include all relevant details about your schools operations and activities. It should also be consistent with related policies and procedures (for example, policies on student behaviour management, excursions and camps, or the student code of conduct).

The VRQA will continue to support schools to implement these new requirements in 2027.