Does your school allow phone use during day?

imahine kids taking photos of others, videoing staff at work. Texting their parents who then phone school rather than getting help from staff themselves and making endless work
calling mates in lessons to meet in the loos.

are those enough?! 😀

Yes they have been banned in my DDs secondary school since they've been there. One is in sixth form now and one yr 9. They have to turn them off and put them in their lockers at the start of the day. If they get caught with them, even if turned off and in their bags, the phones are removed and they are punished accordingly.

I thought all schools followed this type of protocol so am surprised to hear other schools allow kids to use them around the school. Of course that's inviting problems.

DD’s school uses yondr pouches. I think it’s brilliant - they all get properly stuck into clubs etc at break times & socialise rather than being stuck on their phones. And it just removes a point of friction from the classroom. Yes some kids find work arounds (tbh I don’t think dd always locks hers just because she can’t be bothered to unlock at the end of the day) but when the default is no phones it’s far easier to police the odd infraction.

I think that one day soon we will look back in horror at the freedom we have given this generation of dc with smart devices and sm so young.

Middle school since forever: handed in at the beginning of the day. Returned at home time. Takes two seconds: each year group has a cart, each class has a box on the cart with named slots, each child picks up their gadget as they walk past the MS office on their way home.

Upper school: this was trialled on four separate days at the end of last year. Hugely successful per teachers and pupils. As of this year they do the same as middle school.

This is a city center school (in the US), where 90%+ students commute by subway and bus.

The data is irrefutable. The Netherlands and France have already taken drastic action. I think that barring phone and watches completely will be the norm within the next few years. We will look back on the poor kids who didn’t have these bans with regret. I saw this yesterday.

Yeah, i can see that as an issue and I bet there will always be kids who manage to get around it. One mitigation is the school regularly asking parents for the make and model of their kids' phones - I'm sure there are parents who support their kids in getting around the system though.

I think the penalties for being seen with a phone are now much worse as well eg not just a single detention.

I don’t really understand why having a phone in the school environment is more of a safeguarding risk than any other environment. In some ways, it’s a safer place, more closely supervised by adults and safety in numbers. The bad stuff usually happens outside of school.

I absolutely agree with you - like I said on another post I’m playing devils advocate a bit on this thread (but I would have broken the rule 😂.)
In reality and probably from my position as a primary school teacher I am an advocate of dumb phones only for under 16s.

The reason given for children needing phones is often they need to be contactable on the way home. A dumb phone achieves this without the risks associated with social media.

Ban phones, but with the way things are going perhaps re-introduce 'Duck and Cover' rehearsals?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover

The price is just gone up a lot actually, we gave all of our kids one free, and if they lose it, they have to pay a replacement fee, but this is gone up, presumably as demand increases

We too have had yondr for several years.

Slightly unnecessarily aggressive- no, I thought that many schools that I know of, you get the gist, had banned them.

Some of them absolutely will do this, but if 80% comply, they you will only be dealing with 20% of the problems phones cause.

It’s about creating a cultural change, which can’t happen overnight. But if you can get Year 7 and 8 into the swing of never using a phone during the school day, they will be used to it once they get to Year 10 and 11.

DD has just started secondary. I think our school would struggle to ban phones, as they’ve actually sent out apps for the students to load for things like ordering their lunch.

At primary they assumed all parents had smartphones, which created issues as DH didn’t so I had to do all the school admin; at secondary they seem to assume all kids have smartphones!

My school's very lax on this. No phones in lessons but free for all everywhere else. It's a common occurrence to be bumped into by a student looking at their phone. The whole of break and lunch consists of them staring at devices or making TikToks. Teachers are often also on phones as we are encouraged to have various apps on them.

We have a huge sixth form and no year 7 or 8, which often influences the rules culture.

Yes, schools obviously need to have solutions that work for their own set ups.

Yondr pouch - gets locked in the morning, unlocked at home time. I'm sure there are ways around them but as parents have to pay for the pouch, and any damaged or lost pouches result in both detentions and parents having to pay for the pouch again, there are some deterrents. Like I said, I don't think any system is perfect or foolproof but the staff at DS1's school seem to be very positive about the difference it's made for the majority of just removing the temptation of having their phone nearby when they are used to being glued to it, and just looking/checking/posting quickly when they're out of sight.

For the other poster who asked, no the restrictions at DS1's school don't apply to sixth form.

This is the only real solution to safeguarding issues. Ideally with the brick phone being the child’s only phone.
If everyone did it there would be no pressure for children to have social media and a big problem solved.

Well considering the safeguarding issues of having them on site- yes I would.

No, Yr 7 - Yr 10 have to hand phones in to House Master/Mistress every morning and then they are handed back on way out of school. They have school devices for all their work etc with very, very strict firewalls. We support this completely.

The rule at our secondary school is no smartphones on the premises, only brick phones without cameras (I’m sure there’s an exception for diabetic kids!). Seems sensible to me, teachers have enough crap to deal with and they have plenty of time to be on them out of school.

My DH uses Libre and was a mature student about 10 years ago - but it came with a handheld reader - he hacked his phone to use as a reader but I think he still had the reader.

DD is Y6 and phones go into the office for the day.
DS is at specialist and I know several bring them for the taxi ride but with such small classes I think they just keep an eye out during the day.

I dont think children should be allowed phones in school full stop, if for a life threatening condition then yes, anything else then no, that's what the school office is there for.

How much are yondr pouches?

Meant to add - I do believe that for some kids it's actually been a relief to be able to forget their phone and SM for the school day at least

What, you thought every school had exactly the same rules as yours?

Our school allowed phones until this year; now no use either in class or break times (this is secondary btw). Still allowed to physically have the phones with them but switched off.