Campaign for smart phones to be banned in schools

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/13/fathers-legal-action-smartphone-ban-england-schools?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Im a bit confused at why schools wouldnt just do this anyway?

I personally think children only need to travel to school with brick phones.

Brick phones do not have the ability to store travel passes, check for travel disruption or provide maps when routes change or end without warning, leaving them stranded.

Handing it in each morning is enough.

There are phones like the balance phone which have maps and useful apps without social media and all the damaging bits. Smart phones should 100% be banned in schools, as part of a wider cultural shift that will hopefully see this social experiment that has been performed on a generation of children, as akin to giving them cigarettes, or heroin even!

At my sons school the phones all go in a specific phone locker in their form room until the end of the day. If a child needs to contact a parent they go to the office.
1 strike and the phone is confiscated until the end of the day
subsequent strikes and only a parent can collect the phone from the office

YANBU

My London borough has already done this, with several secondaries including my DC’s banning them from next year. The local primary has also banned next year’s Y6 from bringing them in as well.

You could just, you know, parent your child and use the Android or iOS controls that prevent social media or other apps from being downloaded? It's certainly cheaper than buying a separate device.

Handing them in at the beginning of the day is sufficient.

YABU. Make parents responsible for teaching their kids how to appreciate and use tech appropriately and not abuse it. I won’t be supporting the schools to issue blanket punishments for kids who stick to the rules.

DS keeps his phone in a zipped compartment in his bag all day.

Where I live you can only have discounted bus travel using an app. Otherwise you have to pay the full adult fare. It’s madness but there is only one bus company so there’s nothing anyone can do.

Don’t want to start with the ‘in my day…’ stuff but I think this is all part of a broader question about how the benefits of phones weigh up against the drawbacks, especially for kids.

I never had a phone until after leaving school and yes, I did sometimes lose my bus fare, miss the bus, miss my stop etc but I sorted it out without calling parents and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It wasn’t a particularly nice area and not always safe but what does ‘safe’ even mean? Is spending hours on social media ‘safe’? In the article they refer to boys being filmed naked and the videos shared around school, if we’d been told back in the 90s that this is what the future was going to look like we’d have thought it was some kind of dystopian nightmare!

We can’t turn back time and smartphones have lots of advantages and have their place, but we do need to think about what that place should be.

It's easy brownie points to be seen making a fuss about what schools should be doing (which most are already to the extent they can).

Much harder to just get on with quietly parenting which after all is the real issue- kids are on smartphones for more hours than they spend at school.

See also: the tories making a fuss about this now in opposition for easy brownie points, as opposed to getting on with governing (inc standing up to tech companies) when they were in government.

My DC's school bans phones but it's ignored by lots. My DC are rule followers particularly one of them. Once I had to pick ds for a hospital appointment and he didn't show up so I go to reception and ask if they could help locate him. I was told to try his mobile. I said he's not allowed a mobile at school. Oh yes she said clearly surprised there was a rule follower.

What I am saying it probably won't make much difference. For some reason my DC are very disciplined with phones and social media and I have no idea why.

It's really hard to enforce without legislation.
Even if the head wants them out of sight worn down teachers dealing with a million other types of problems can let phone discipline slide.

They just need banning, walk to school with them, leave school with them, just lock them away in the middle of the day.
It's not hard to no child needs their phone in the middle of the day.

I am grateful my daughter has her phone with her. She never has it out in class unless they’re asked to do so, but it’s been such a great thing for her. Am aware she’s in the minority, but I don’t think we would have managed to keep her in school without it - or at least it would have been far more difficult.

Bus passes are on an app here. As are people with blood sugar monitoring for diabetes apps.

Some kids have a long journey to answer from school and want to listen to music. MP3 players aren’t very common anymore and it’s common to download music from streaming services like Spotify.

My kids school don’t allow phones during school hours but don’t have a rule for the journey to and from school.

If schools ban phones then they need to make calling parents from the school office an option and be prepared to deliver messages to kids like when I was at school. Considering the access to toilets situation, I predict that many schools won’t make this easy because they don’t want the extra work.

How about parents try parenting?

It's really not hard. Google Family Link literally has a section in the app which allows you to set school hours. The phone is then automatically locked during this time except for any crucial apps which you can specify.

Sick of pathetic 'gentle' parents needing the government to parent their kids for them.