School confiscating phone

@AnonnyMouseDave very few I imagine, but that doesn't make my point not true. It is a choice to undermine schools by thinking your child should be the exception. A child's success at school is far more likely with parental buy in.

What percentage of parents have the time and skillset to properly educate their child at home, and ensure they get the benefits of socialisation that schools give?

We do the phones in a box thing and it works very well - anyone who is late arriving or early leaving hands theirs to reception instead of their form teacher so they can get it and there is a limited window for collecting it at the end of the day.

DDs school only has form first thing. I thought that was usual now we have electronic registers.

Quite a lot of parents who pick their children’s phones up pretend that they haven’t and keep them for the rest of the week, to teach them a lesson. Not everyone has an issue with this.

School should ring and tell you, I’ve had parents turn up 5 minutes after they’ve been called because they are so upset that their child’s phone has been taken off them.

@AnonnyMouseDave you're obliged to educate your child. You're not obliged to have them in a school.

JassyRadlett
It obviously works for that setting. T he teacher in me is interested in how it works because most schools don't have students with their form teachers at the beginning and end of the day.

If they've timetabled it within a teaching timetable so there's an allocated time within teaching hours to sort phones out, I can see it working.
It would surprise me if a school did timetable 10 minutes at the start and end of the day though because even if the task only takes 5 minutes that's lesson changeover time to consider and many schools use their 15-20 minutes form time to cover pshe materials or other curriculum things.
If they've timetabled it within the day, I'd be more on board from a workload point of view and from a dismissal at hometime point of view, but would still have some reservations.

Of course the school might be an academy that's abandoned directed time and the Burgundy Book so my concern about directed time would be neither here nor there.

I work in a huge secondary, we don't have form times in the morning, just in the afternoon and not everyday.
On silent and in bags is the rule and I'd say 98% of students follow this. It's always the same ones who don't.

That is rubbish. We are obliged to educate our children and we do not have a choice of schools. We pretend to accept whatever nonsense the school forces us to agree to as a condition of our child getting he place she needs, just like we agree to googles ts and cs depite having not read them, because there is not choice.

@annahay that's it - a 1st offense punishment (phone confiscated until end of day, lines and a letter home) should for most parents mean a telling off at home plus a lecture about not doing it again.

Honestly, I haven't gone into all the ins and outs but it seems to work, staff seem to like it. It doesn't seem to have been a massive issue, talking to parents with older kids before but it was felt that a device-free space in school, starting with the younger years and then being implemented gradually throughout the school, would be beneficial.

But I suspect all schools work very differently - it would be vanishingly rare for a student not to be at afternoon registration/form time. Detentions/other activities take place after that - not least because most staff have their own forms to deal with at registration times. Kids have their phones on them after registration, just as they do if they have activities before school.

So all kids are there. Kids go and get the phones they handed in that morning. If there's a discrepancy between phone and owners, phones go back in at that point (in theory, I'm not sure if/how frequently it happens. Doesn't seem to have been an issue in DS's form so far.

We're an urban school with a catchment of about 700m so no buses to worry about.

Maybe we've just got a more honest student body that this doesn't seem to be much of an issue. It'd be easier and lower risk to nick someone's phone from their blazer or their bag at lunchtime than from the box at form time when everyone else is literally looking at the box of phones. I'm sure it's not perfect and there are problems and issues.

But yeah, I much prefer my kid having a device-free space when he's at school. Not that he's a big user of his own phone - he barely touches it - but I don't think they contribute much to a positive environment at school and I've heard horror stories from other schools of how devices are used/shared/nicked at break and lunch times, let alone the classroom disruption.

All systems have upsides and downsides. A system doesn't have to be perfect or cost-free to be an alternative option.

The simplest thing is for parents to hold themselves and their children accountable to the policies they agreed to when they enrolled their child. If there is a genuine reason why this is an issue on one occasion, the parents will probably find schools are generally quite supportive.

Yep, just as with any other contraband. I'm not against confiscation.

The form teachers who implement this are enthusiastic about the overall impact it's having, my son's teacher was clear that they'd all pushed to have the original trial mad permanent, the process seems swift and uncomplicated, children seem unremarkably competent in identifying and taking their own phones from the box at the end of the day (they'll all have security on them and any missing phone means all phones back in the box and handed out one by pen and unlocked in front of the teacher - this has not happened so far). It gets rid of phones at break and lunch times, removes the temptation/disruptive element using them at the wrong times. As a parent, im a huge fan.
I'm sure they might be happy, though the fact they're happy having yet another task given to them and more time taken up at the end of the day (which either comes out of the directed time budget so is taking time away from T&L/pastoral responsibilities, or isn't being counted in directed time so they're being expected to take on even more for free) would have me wondering what the issues were like that additional workload was deemed worth it.
Are staff expected to be available indefinitely so that a student can collect their phone after they've been kept back to speak to a member of staff? If they have a detention do they get it back before the detention or after? Who's responsible for the phone until the end of the detention or are staff expected to be on site until after all detentions are finished and in a set place just in case someone needs a phone?

How does the put all the phones back in the box work if students have detentions, different lessons to get to, haven't got the ability to hang around indefinitely because their bus/train leaves and the teacher needs to put everything back in the box and sort individual phones out?

As a parent I'd not be happy with my child's phone being in a box all day in that situation. I'd also not be happy if my child was late home having missed their bus/train because Mr Smith decided everyone would be held back whilst he tried his best to work out where some phones had gone.

Ok.....my plan B solution.
Simple rule - "don't see it, don't hear it". In other words it's in your bag and switched off.
If caught being used or rings in a lesson then a sliding scale of punishment.
So 1st offence confiscated until the end of the day but returned to the student after school with a letter to the parents that has to be returned and signed saying this has happened. Student also has to do 100 lines of "I will not use my phone in school".
If it happens again then the punishment goes up.

So many of my students refuse to leave their bags when the fire bell goes. They're more concerned about their phone than the safety of their classmates. I imagine there'd be at least one who would stubbornly refuse to vacate without the safe being unlocked and then being given their phone first.

Schools could buy a cheap safe, which is screwed into the wall. I think removing phones in the day will be the future. Crazy how much time is wasted and it would resolve SO many issues.
My DN just walks out of school is she doesn't like the punishments from school. Not sure she would do that and leave her precious phone behind. She has a dad who backs her, so school stand no chance at discipling her.

@JassyRadlett I'm just curious how they can guarantee they won't be tampered with and the contents stolen.

It's pretty bloody bulky for a start. And what are they going to do with it?

I don't know what every teacher does with the box during the day but there don't seem to have been huge issues.

My daughter had her phone confiscated at school and was told that a parent would have to come and collect it from the office. She was a week without her phone because I was busy.
She didn't get her phone out of her bag again at school.
It was a good lesson for her

I'm my school all of the classroom cupboards (general classroom, not places where sensitive info is stored) are all unlocked by the same key. They're also very cheap and the barrel locks are very easy to break. I wouldn't feel comfortable that your proposed solution would be sufficient in my school. I don't even have somewhere I can put my car keys that I'm confident is safe.

😂😂😂 "definitely won't have heard that before" made me chuckle

she should have called you using the school phone to explain the situation. school know this - they did not "send her off without it". there were options.

Teach her to follow the rules. or give her a dumb phone which she is less likely to get into trouble with, if she can't be trusted at school with a smart one. and make sure that she knows she can use the school reception phone to call you if needed

I'm only 28 and if I ever got in trouble at school it was "what did you do?"- and my parents were laid back, very "don't ask don't tell", but you look now it's automatically "my angel wouldn't do that"; parents just can't seem to accept their child has done something wrong!!

This would be my solution.
Morning - tutor time (registration)
Everyone walks in and the teacher is at the door holding a lockable box. As each student passes they say "Good Morning" and place their phone if they have one in the box. The phone should be a small pouch with the students name on - phone should be in that pouch before it's handed in.
Everyone sits down and takes the register and does whatever else happens at tutor time.
Afternoon - end of day tutor time. Everyone goes back to their form room, sits down and the phones are handed out. That should take about 10 minutes.
During the day the locked box is in a locked cupboard or drawer and if the classroom is empty it should be locked.
There should be consequences is a student is found to have a phone on them - but it should be a sliding scale of punishment (1st offence different to repeatedly having a phone etc).

@JassyRadlett but presumably they still have sanctions for mot handing in the phone? Such as... confiscation?