Taiwan's Legislative Yuan has amended the law to let schools decide for themselves how to manage students' mobile phones. A Taipei City councillor argues this will create confusion and is bad news for schools and teachers.

• The Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the School Health Act on their third reading, allowing schools to counsel students on, manage or restrict items that affect physical and mental health — including mobile phones and tablets — according to students' ages and actual needs.
• Kuomintang Taipei City councillor Wu Shih-cheng criticised the provisions as too vague, saying they fail to spell out what counselling, management and restriction mean, and that how phones are to be collected and stored are open questions.
• He is concerned that leaving implementation entirely to schools will leave teachers and principals afraid to act, and possibly facing lawsuits from parents later on. He called on Taipei City to take the lead in setting citywide uniform rules.
• Taipei City Education Department Commissioner Tang Chih-min said the current principle is simply that phones must not disrupt teaching, and that the city has trialled phone-free zones in libraries, study rooms and elsewhere — an approach he described as relatively open.
• The Ministry of Education said it would assess whether to revise existing regulations, and teachers' groups have already called for a comprehensive review of campus phone rules.

Outlook: The Taipei City Council has instructed the Education Department to study uniform rules, and councillors hope for a decision within one to two months. Whether the Ministry of Education will follow with national regulations remains undecided.