AIBU to ask for advice on how to overturn a school decision - quickly

Ok. Hide one in her bag - it has worked for the many hundreds of teenagers I've taught! No hear, no see, all ok!
I just think in the longer term, this might not be the school for you.
Do the poll if you want to, though.

Wow! We have all waited for you @Canwehavesesomesanityback to
come back corroborate your claim that your DDs school has a policy to “chase them down the street and snatch it out of their hand”.

You only respond to the one post that
overall supports your campaign to overturn government guidelines in schools across the UK.

Many PPs have engaged in your thread. You have chosen not to engage because responses which have on the whole been reasonable and offering of much range of opinion and experience, have not validated what you expected.

It has been said many times that if you contacted the school with your personal experience, the school might make reasonable adjustments.

Your claims have been spurious at best! But who are we to know.

Good luck! We will be closely following your attempts to quickly overturn statutory guidelines. Should go national.

As to the ‘chase down’ and ‘snatch’ - that is not Government policy, it would come
under the school own behaviour policy, so
why not have a word with DDs school or
move her.

Or alternatively interpret the schools policy about the use of phones outside your DDs school like a grownup.

If someone took a phone off my child outside of school I’d report it to the police. I’d let the school know that. Email the governors

So when she is discovered using it (or any of the others whose parents also tell their children to hide in their bag) and there are images of children on school premises (including the toilets) posted online - or deepfakes of your child - will you be happy to see the school receiving formal DfE warning notices, Ofsted downgrades, etc, etc, because they have not adhered to the Law?

Unworkable, because the staff aren't leaving with the students, and no teacher is going to do a pavement confiscation, or get on a bus to do it! Believe me. It's been repeated by the many other teachers on here.
Have a look at other schools anyway.

I disagree with those saying kids don’t need phones. The problem is these kids haven’t been raised to know how to deal with life without them .

I would give my child a brick phone that is kept in their blazer- turned off.

I would also email the school explaining the situation your child has experienced and also the rumours you’ve have heard.

I disagree with those saying kids don’t need phones. The problem is these kids haven’t been raised to know how to deal with life without them .
But they should be able to manage without them. Have you never had a broken phone or no signal?

Schools are in an impossible position.

The Department of Education has mandated that schools should be phone free environments by default. They've also gone as far as to specify that pupils should not have access to phones at any point in the school day, including break and lunchtimes. This is statutory, the school have to evidence that they're doing everything possible to comply but it relies on a level of pupil and parent co-operation that isn't realistic in most settings.

Organisations who are very concerned about the impact of phone use on kids are pushing for schools to ban them fully. Some parents who are trying and failing to police their own kids use of tech are blaming schools for not making a stand (so they don't have to!) and want a complete ban, while other parents are vehemently opposed to any restrictions on their child's phone use at all.

Schools local to us who have tried the "not seen not heard" policy many are advocating here have had a nightmare enforcing it. Lots of kids going missing during the school day because they're truanting lessons to use their phones in toilets, parents kicking off and threatening staff if the phones are confiscated, even calling the Police reporting it as "theft". It takes a huge amount of staff time to deal with the fallout from this kind of thing. The lockable pouches some schools have purchased for kids to keep their phones in are costly, and the kids are getting around these anyway by buying devices online to unlock them, breaking them, or having a second phone. Schools who are now taking a really hard-line approach are probably doing so because less restrictive measures have been tried and failed, or simply require a level of staff time and capacity that they cannot give.

YABU. We all survived phone free until recently. Kids need to learn to look after themselves; they are growing up useless nowadays

I absolutely agree with you, @neverbeenskiing, and you'll have seen the reaction on here - eg calling the police on teachers if they try to confiscate. We won't win. It's always those parents who sit crying in the office when it's been proven that Izzy has been filming other girls in the toilet, I find.

Sorry OP I get that you are angry and upset but don’t agree phones should be allowed.

Awful to hear that your kid got a blood nose because of an altercation but having a phone wouldn’t have changed that.

Kids hurting other kids unfortunately will happen phones or not.

You are focusing on the wrong thing. It isn’t the phones it’s the kids that dod this to your child.

How would having a phone prevent the incident? How would a phone improve the outcome?

If your husband knew he was driving nearby why couldn't he have arranged to pick her up in advance? Or if it was a last-minute change, phone to school to get a message to her?

If you're going to contact the school, focus on the incident. The phone issue is irrelevant (and won't be entertained by the school).

So tell me how my son can get the bus to school without a phone when his pass is on the phone? There is no other option! Thankfully his school has a lot of kids getting the bus and understands their need.

I’d imagine the school Head of Year/Governors/Headteacher have more important things to do than wasting their time negotiating children’s mobile phone usage terms with neurotic parents. If nothing else they must be practicing their sprint speeds for all those high street ‘phone snatches they are doing…

There is not a chance anay teacher will even notice a child with a mobile phone outside of school, let alone give a monkeys about it.

There is no way teachers will have agreed to a policy whereby they have to keep a look out for pupils on the way home and 'chase them down' if they see a phone in their hand.

Omce the day has ended school has no touch 9n thebkids. If a teacher snatces a phone from a child, especially outside of school grounds, that is possibly assult and theft!

Is your argument based on safety of travel to and from s hool and having phone for emergencies?
I do see your point there, depending on how far they are travelling.

My kids school want to implement this, a lot.of teachera dont as they dont have enough chrome books, so the s4,5,6 often use phones to look up resources. My eldest has her phone read stuff to her.

It does seem rather draconian, and lots of schools have phone lockers or phone pouches that children lock phones up in rather than a blanket ban, but, to paraphrase our cockney comrades - their gaff, their rules. They are not going to change the policy because one parent is unhappy with it.

you very clearly do not live in a rural area where there are no pavements and school is 10 miles away....... our school's policy was all phones had to be off when at school.

Well in 30+ years of teaching I was never told to do something so ridiculous as "run down the road and snatch it out of their hand", and I simply wouldn't do iy...and I'd guess a fair number of the teachers at that school won't either (even if they don't admit so to the tyrant head teacher who introduced the rule)!

Bus passes, school dinner accounts, timetables, so much is now attached to phones....

OP @Canwehavesesomesanityback. The school / teachers / staff will not be taking phones off pupils outside the premises. This would be unlawful. You or your DD have misinterpreted this.

Can you link to the policy? It will be on the website. If you don’t want to identify the school, can you photo the pages with the “rules” and post it here.

I hope your daughter is recovering from whatever happened. And if serious, you have reported it to the police.

If their bus is delayed or the trains go down when they’re half way home they can call and ask for a lift? If they get separated from their friends or there’s a change to an after school club, they can call and let you know?