AIBU to ask if school can go through my son's phone?

[ejk10]

This hasn't happened to my son yet -but he thinks it might, and happened to some of his friends today.

Apparently a child has made a statement which the school is investigating (none of the boys have been told what the complaint is) and a teacher demanded to look through this boy's phone and deleted some information. My son has not been questioned but is friends with those who have been and is wondering if the school would ask to look at his phone.

I'm not sure of the legalities of this. Part of me thinks if he has nothing wrong why worry if they look - another part of me thinks it is a huge invasion of privacy. My son assures me he has done nothing wrong - regardless of whether he has or not I'm questioning if they have the right to look through private data.

Can anyone shed any light?

I'm astonished that the legal aspect of phone checking was your first concern. Mine would have been to wonder what the heck my son might have done or been thinking about doing that he feels worried about his phone being checked. I'd be giving him a lecture about keeping it in his bag at all times in school and never, ever taking or uploading photo designed to distress or humiliate.

LJ for many parents their first response is to wonder about their rights. OP is definitely not alone.

Have you asked him to show you wjatvis on his phone?

Have you asked what they are looking for?

I am more concerned that you say you are a governor with the safeguarding remit but are seemingly trying to avoid your son's school from taking a reasonable course of action from doing theirs!!!

• what is

So. Have you looked through his phone to see if he has any involvement in the issue that is of concern to his teachers ?

They might not have told them the reason because kids talk and if they told one kid all the others would know and probably get rid of incriminating evidence. Kids are smart and stupid at the same time. Smart enough to know they did something wrong and stupid enough to still do it.

As a parent, it would concern me more that my dc felt worried to hand over the phone - that would suggest there was something on it that could get them into trouble.

My DS makes notes about things he wants to discuss with me/his dad/his therapist until he can put them in his journal at home. He would not want a teacher seeing those notes and I wouldn't blame him for that.

I wouldn’t be happy with anybody going though my phone. There’s nothing untoward on it but it is personal content - which isn’t the same as inappropriate.

I'm astonished that the legal aspect of phone checking was your first concern. Mine would have been to wonder what the heck my son might have done or been thinking about doing that he feels worried about his phone being checked

Quite

I wouldn’t be happy with anybody going though my phone. There’s nothing untoward on it but it is personal content - which isn’t the same as inappropriate.

Presumably you are an adult and not a child attending school? This thread is not about adults. It’s about children. Big difference.

given the amount of awful bullying that goes on using electronic devices, I think it is quite correct for schools to have this power. for the price of the potential loss of privacy, pupils get the benefit of knowing teachers have the power to intervene when it is needed.

teach your son that he shouldn't put anything on his phone or on social media that he wouldn't be happy for you, or his gran, or his teacher, or a random person on a bus, to be aware of. we shouldn't expect privacy on our phones - this is a general rule for his whole life not just while he is at school. data leaks happen, all sorts of things can happen with your data. the gatekeeping needs to be keeping what is on his devices reasonable, legal and safe - not fighting to prevent someone from finding out what's on there.

They won’t be scrolling through notes of what a child wants to say to their therapist - they’ll be looking for images which could upset or harass or embarrass their staff or students.

If parents were vigilant about monitoring their child's phone schools wouldn't have to waste valuable teaching time like this.
When the children of all those who object are bullied their first whine would be What's the school doing about it?
The usual double standards from many parents.

To be clear my son is not worried about them checking his phone - and I regularly check his phone. However - I also believe in a right to privacy. He doesn't have, but he may keep things on his phone that he doesn't want school to know about - nothing of a safeguarding concern - but I believe everyone has a right to privacy.

I’d have got to the phone first and gone through what’s stored.

You are his parent. If you suspect he may be concealing something it is wrong to encourage him to leave the phone. You have a duty to see what’s on there.

Are you really a Governor? Surely you understand Safeguarding?

He (or anyone else) doesnt have a right to harrass or bully people under the guise of privacy though does he. If he wants to be sure that his phone is kept private then he can not take it to school.

To be clear my son is not worried about them checking his phone - and I regularly check his phone. However - I also believe in a right to privacy. He doesn't have, but he may keep things on his phone that he doesn't want school to know about - nothing of a safeguarding concern - but I believe everyone has a right to privacy.

That might be what you believe. Others - whose children have been driven to take their own lives because of cyber bullying- would take a very different view.

They couldn’t give a shit about ‘notes to self’ on there!

If they told him exactly what they were looking for, that might breach the right to privacy/protection for another child - for example 'We've heard that there are photos of a year 7 girl being passed around' - which then could lead to everybody assuming a particular girl has been taking nude pictures and the rumour mill going crazy. Or that there is an investigation into gang related activity - which alerts actual gang members that they've been noticed. Or other, less illegal but distressing activities or ones that could be shared on social media and identify both other students/staff (who might be 'no photo' for their own protection), or put a child at further risk (such as risque filming of a student with a boy/girlfriend that identifies them and puts them at risk of parental wrath for their choices).

They can't tell anybody why they're looking or what they're looking for - but they certainly can look. And it would be wise for your DS to comply.

DS' school had an issue once where someone had given out a students number and they were getting nasty messages so a teacher called in the students involved and deleted the number from their phones. They didn't tell parents what it was about until they had checked all the people they thought were involved because they didn't want anyone thinking to write it down before the number was deleted (I'm not sure how they stopped the students warning each other though)

In any case, going by most phones I've seen, unless he wipes it down with a cleaning solution after every use, they won't have a moment's difficulty in identifying any code to get into it.

If it's something serious and he refused to hand his phone over then they would just contact the police, who obviously do have the power to search through his phone.

I'm not sure of the legalities of the school themselves searching through his phone, but I would bet that by now they are allowed to if they have good reason to.

To be clear my son is not worried about them checking his phone

And yet you also mentioned that "this hasn't happened to my son yet -but he thinks it might"

So even though it's his friends who've had their phones checked for something which sparked an investigation, his interest's purely academic is it?

As his parent I think you need sit down with him and go through his phone with him. Use it as an excercise to see what he deems appropriate and calmly discuss the possible problems that you may have with it. Ultimately you are responsible for what is on his phone since I presume the contract is in your name.
If there are images or threads you are unhappy with then you have a duty to report them to school. Some poor parent or teacher may be dealing with the consequences of cyber bullying. If it was your son or you were the teacher at the receiving end wouldn’t you be grateful to the parent who was willing to speak out. Your son’s friends don’t need to know that you are the whistle blower.

I'd assume my son had something on his phone that he thought might get him into trouble. He must be worried about it to bring it up at home. I'd be finding out what it was.