Government announces ban on mobile phones in schools

[noblegiraffe]

...because it won't cost them anything and there won't be any pushback because the vast majority of schools banned phones years ago.

Perhaps they could also ban kids running in corridors or pushing in the lunch queue.

What a waste of time government this is.

(by 'banning phones' it's generally accepted to mean kids can have them in their bags but they must be turned off or at least on silent and never seen - so any parental cries of 'but they need them for the journey home' are irrelevant.)

They could indeed. I'm sure they have plenty of time to do that for every student in every lesson. Via email or a printout- what do you reckon? Or perhaps they could upload it to the learning platform. Of course, they also need to to send out a copy of everything that gets written ad hoc on the whiteboard during the lesson too. What do you reckon will be the best method for that? Perhaps they could take a photo?

As it happens, they saw my point, at least where sixth formers were concerned, and have backtracked on the no phones policy in those lessons.

If the UK were like other countries, they would have these things called “textbooks.” The government might even give schools enough money to be able to buy the bloody things….

Surely a PowerPoint would always be uploaded to the class's resources site on the school's system? Such systems are linked to the class roll, so all students can access it.

As I was doing at the turn of the century and ever since, on increasingly more sophisticated platforms.

They could indeed. I'm sure they have plenty of time to do that for every student in every lesson. Via email or a printout- what do you reckon? Or perhaps they could upload it to the learning platform.

Yes, any of those things would be normal. I can't see any need for a teacher to regularly plan lessons where extensive and lengthy copying of notes off the board is needed

I suspect, given the current state of secondary schools, that no one would have faith that a move to grammar schools as standard would see secondary moderns being anything other than a place to stick those who failed at 11 (which is in itself a concept many find problematic). It’s pretty hard to imagine investment in them, or finding staff for them.

The crisis in our schools can’t be ignored in favour of wishing the system were different. And whatever anyone’s views on the different education policies over the past thirty years, we are currently in a dire state.

ICT doesn't teach you how to use your mobile phone 😒

My dd from age 7 was teaching her teachers how to use their own interactive whiteboards by high school she was being called into classes to help trouble shoot PC issues as an English major she finds it hilarious even she has said it would be ideal for children to be taught more from a young age about technology as the amount of times she was forced to step in and prevent fellow students being scammed on the phone was ridiculous parents didn't teach them neither did the school

Perhaps other subjects are taught differently, but social sciences and humanities at my DD's school seem to involve a considerable amount of class discussion and 'brainstorming' (rightly so imo) which gets written up on the whiteboard and which my DD finds useful to photograph so she can write up notes later in a format that best suits her.

Since this method produced 8s and 9s at GCSE and looks likely to produce As and A*s at A level and, if so, the school will no doubt want to laud her achievements as evidence of their teaching excellence, it would be pragmatic to allow her to continue learning in the way that suits her best. It seems her sixth form teachers agree. Who wouldn't want to accommodate a student whose reflected glory you're hoping to bask in next summer!

When a school's blanket ban on mobile phones means that your (predicted A stars in A levels) sixth-form student daughter is told by her subject teacher that no, she can't now take a photo of the board as she isn't allowed her mobile phone on in school, you know that common sense has left the building.
Or it it means that for safeguarding reasons, the school has a ban on mobile phones being used on site.
Which is way more important than being able to take a photo of the board.

All these anecdotes are very interesting, but the actual data on the subject is really clear: schools' academic results and kids' mental health improves when smartphones are banned.

Any "woo hoo, a phone lets you take a picture of the board!" is clearly outweighed by the enormous amount of distraction created by these devices.

The pro-phone comments on here are all sounding very "You don't get it, do you, some of us REALL DO DRIVE BETTER after we've had a few drinks! I know myself and I know my driving skills!"

@user1477391263 - in a nutshell.

I'm well aware of what ICT does and doesn't teach you.