Are there any parents out there who support smartphones in schools?

I think a rule that your phone must be in your bag and switched off is very sensible and I fully support sanctions if that rule is broken. At my DC's school the penalty is that your phone is confiscated for 7 days if a member of staff sees or hears it, or for 24 hours if a parent goes in to collect it. Only one of my DC ever had their phone confiscated and it was a genuine oversight - he had forgotten to switch it off and got a text or something during assembly. I made him wait the week as I think it is a sensible rule and he failed to comply. But I don't see any real harm in phones in bags or lockers as long as they are genuinely not used.
Like lots of kids round here my DC had a 20+ mile journey to school and it was handy to have a means of contact in the event of missed/broken down buses and so on. Plus mine liked to listen to music, play games etc on their journeys to and from school. Of course you can get other devices that do those things but their phones did everything. If there had been recurrent problems I would have taken their phones off them, but between them, my DC managed 21 years at secondary school with a phone in their bags virtually every day, and bar that one occasion there were no adverse incidents. So I think it's OK to have but not use a phone provided the school can monitor the situation and enforce the rules strictly. I don't think they should be allowed out in school time.

Ok put yourself in the kids position.

Mum has gone to work
You are at the bus stop
The driver won't let you on.
School is miles away
And you've no key to get back into the house.

What would you do to get yourself unstuck?
What exactly are you expecting a stranger to do to help?

My DD has hers switched off in her bag, she uses it to call me after school to ask for a pick up or tell me she's going to a mates house etc. It's never caused her any issues. If any kids are using phones in the school day without permission they get taken off them. I don't see the drama. Smart phones are a part of life and secondary age kids need to get used to using them responsibly.

Smartphones arent allowed in eldest DD's high school (not even at break/lunchtime), but everyone smuggles them anyway.

Really glad it worked out for you, @PurpleThistle7, and yes it probably helped things along if your daughter's the "rule keeping" type

I had to smile though when a PP mentioned that scrolling on a phone's great for downtime relaxing. Yes it is, but the trouble - as practically all schools will confirm - is that the downtime is too often taken at inappropriate moments

I agree in part but my daughter is a caveat here (though expect many would say the same!). I never contact her during the school day and I reinforce it’s only for break times. But we went from being unable to make it a full school day to her being mostly content most of the time. She messages me maybe twice a week now which is genuinely amazing after a really rough start to high school. So for us it was a wonderful tool but my daughter is intensely rule abiding and would never mess around during class or anything - aware that’s part of her neurotypical traits as opposed to how most teenagers are!

Yes. Scotland though so maybe it’s different? It’s a community campus so there’s a library and GP on site and it’s across 3 buildings so there are people in and out and the children roam around to different classes. They can all leave for lunch and various apprenticeships and such too.

All of this, and especially the point about kids learning self reliance

My own DS has significant learning difficulties but now lives happily in the community in his own home, and certainly didn't reach this stage by being persuaded he could never be out of touch with me

He's just one lad of course and everyone's different, but sometimes all this helicopter parenting speaks to me more of a parental need than one of the DCs

You couldn't just come and go as you pleased at DD's school unless you were a 6th former. I believe it is to do with safeguarding.

Are you in the UK?

Yes - fences or walls, intercom for reception, door locks controlled by the reception office. Alarms on fire escapes. SLT patrolling corridors. A bit prison like to be honest! No one can just wander in, and students can’t just walk out.

Only the grammar school which has it’s campus spread out along a road which involves crossing etc. But I’ve never heard of those students just leaving.

Yep!!

But does it have Snake on it?!

Yep, also grew up pre mobiles and I'm honestly not sure if I've ever used a pay phone in the UK. Phone charges were expensive back in the day!

In what era were children contacting their parents during the school day? I grew up pre mobiles and the only reason to phone a parent was if you were ill or seriously misbehaving.

This is confusing - do schools actually have fences around them or similar where you live? Any school around me is just open and students come and go all the time. Not primary school of course but in high school students wander off and onto campus whenever they choose…

Of course they shouldn’t be leaving. But it’s confirmed that they have, and schools have a safeguarding responsibility which includes ensuring the security of the facility. Some young people with additional needs or developmental delay or emotional challenges are a flight risk - every school is required to have security systems in place that actually work to protect their students.

You're in denial.

You described a situation where a young person was in a difficult situation and then was able to find their way out of it with the help of a human.

That's literally what young people need to experience in order to grow into confident adults, able to cope with whatever the world throws at them, self confident and resilient.

The kid wouldn't have been stuck. They could have relied on friends. They could have asked a stranger for help. They could have walked.

This attitude that a kid would have been stuck is so, so damaging. You're literally telling a person they can't cope without a phone. They can. People can.

Children need to be able to get intouch with parents. Things go wrong. Children don't always go home to the same home they left in the morning.

The other day there was a thread with a 12yo, no phone, no key, and the bus driver wouldn't let her on the bus going to school.
A friend got off the bus to help her out. But that's besides the point.

That kid would have been seriously stuck and no means to get intouch with anyone for help.

The horse has bolted, no going back now.

I understand this attitude but this apathy can be challenged, that's what the smartphone free movement is all about - parents finding out that there are many others that think like them and agreeing together to put limits on their kids' access to smartphones together, so that their kid isn't the only one.

I felt the same at one time but now seeing how many people want to push back, I don't think we just have to accept big tech deciding what our kids are exposed to as they grow.

Rather than banning phones I'd much rather see Social Media banned for under 16s. And consequences for companies who don't check out the id of children.

I also think it's daft that parental controls can be turned off kids phones at just 13.

I am happy for my girls' school to.allow them.

My girls use their phones for their bus pass, see where the bus is on the app, it has their school library card, lunch card and homework tracker, as well as the normal banking apps.

I also track their phones to see that they got on the bus and to school okay.

The horse has bolted, no going back now.

So is the ban pointless then?

100% a basic old phone with call function only and only preset phone numbers so just family contacts and emergency line only. That's what we plan to do with DC while they are young teens. I got a mobile at 17 and I think that is the perfect age. I was working for a year and saved up and thats what I want to teach my children. You can buy a fancy ohone with your hard earned cash. It is not a basic right for a child. It is a luxury item.

I’m starting to realise that it’s not the phones that are the problem but the lack of any control parents have over them.

We always locked the kids phones down, and then gradually loosened restrictions as they got older.

I am guessing a lot of people just had their kids a completely unrestricted phone then, given that by far the majority of the objection on this thread are actually objections to social media and not to the more useful aspects of the phone.

Maybe schools should bring in a mobile device management policy 😜Kids can have their phones, but the school will control the allowed apps and the settings.

It’s a well known fact that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did not allow their children access to IPhones and iPads. Or the access was heavily restricted.

It’s not the actual phones per se - it’s the access to social media, the addictive nature of them. The fact that we are all losing our ability to concentrate and focus. This is more profound on children’s brains that are not fully developed.

Of course Apple don’t give a shit about social media.