About schools confiscating phones for a fixed period of time

[palebluepalepink]

I’ve no dog in this race, I am genuinely wondering.

I’ve no objection to phones being confiscated or even requiring parents to pick them up, but how can schools legally keep them overnight or until the end of the week? If the parent is paying for it, or if the phone belonged to the parent in the first place, isn’t that theft?

I’m a teacher. My phone is permanently on silent so I don’t have to worry about ‘forgetting’ and it going off in a lesson.

It’s hardly rocket science.

Darbs76

But I am forgetful. If I forget to do my tax return or to pay for parking, there are consequences to that. Your children want to keep their phones? They need to switch them off. The more important that is to them, the more they should be reminded (by you) to do it.

Weve signed a home /school agreement. Us, dd, and the school.
Phone confiscated for five school days if found in her possession. She accidentally had it in her pocket one day and took it straight to the office.
They do have bag searches and all kids know phones have to be in the office.
We signed knowing this.

And my children are not forgetful I’m talking about a scenario that could happen

But we could all make up stuff that could happen as a reason not to have rules, that's not a valid arguement especially when the hypothetical situations are wholly avoidable

I worked in a school when only a parent or other adult could pick it up. If they couldn’t it would remain in the school safe. Parents went mental.

The head said the same thing every time. Don’t like it, go somewhere else. School rules aren’t a pick and choose option.

give the kid a £10 call and text job for contactability to and from school, so they can't muck about reading porn in lessons. No need for smartphones at school.

and then teach kid to do as it is bloody told.

My son's bike was taken without his consent a few years ago, but returned the same day. I mentioned this in passing to a police officer who said no theft had occurred because the bike was returned, ie he hadn't been deprived of his bike permanently.

By agreeing to the school's rules you are consenting to the phone being taken if those rules are broken. There is also a specified time of return so no it's not theft.

My DD is at Secondary school and phones are in bags on silent during the school day.

Sometimes phones are used in lessons to take photos of experiments, cooking etc.

If she was misusing her phone I would have no problem with it being confiscated for the day. What I would have a major problem with though is if it was not returned for the journey home.

A lot of the children use public transport and the primary purpose of her phone is so that she can be contacted or contact me if there are any problems with her journey. I'm not sure how the school would stand if a child had a problem getting home and had not been able to phone for help because they had taken the phone away.

That's pretty hypothetical for us though as DD has never had her phone taken from her.

and had not been able to phone for help because they had taken the phone away.

If the child had called from school using the school phone to inform the parent that they had had their phone removed, the responsibility would pass to the parent to either find an alternative means of getting them home (if they weren’t happy for the child to travel home without a phone) or take that risk. It’s up to them.

If that child did travel home without their phone but something did happen to them on the way, how would the school feel about that? I think potentially they could leave themselves open to a lot of criticism and scrutiny, even if they were technically within their rights.

I may however be more sensitive to my child having a phone for her safety when she travels as she has SEN and we live close to where Milly Dowler did.

Lindy2

But you can’t place the blame for that on them. Tell your child, if you have your phone confiscated, I will come and get you. Leave work. They’re your responsibility. Enforcing the rules is something the school does for their overall benefit.

@Darbs76 most schools do not go straight to a week's confiscation on the first offence. Most secondaries, at least in my area have a policy of 1st offence = kept till the end of the day; 2nd= only returned to a parent/guardian; 3rd = returned at the end of the week. So why are you catastrophising that your DD might lose her phone for a week because her dad might text her?

In most schools she would only lose her phone for the week if this had occurred twice before ... in which case your DH needs to stop texting her or she needs to take more responsibility for ensuring it is on silent every day.

I used to work in a village that had a tiny school of less than 200 students, most of whom came from various other villages/outlying farms, and as it was so rural most children either got one of the 3 school buses or, if they stayed for afterschool activities, the local bus that ran in the evening.

We still had a phone confiscation policy but, due to the complexities of transport issues, any child that needed their phone for transport reasons would have a modified confiscation. For the week the phone was confiscated they would have to report to the office before registration and hand in their phone and only collect it after the final bell. That way they would not have it during the day but could have it to get home. If they did not hand their phone in then they would be put into isolation for the day and their parents would be called.

So a lawyer has now explained to you why it's not theft, OP, but you still 'disagree'? Ok then...

A week is lenient compared to one school round here.
They keep All phones until July. No appeals.
That was fun for my friend whose ds took her contracted phone in (his having already been confiscated) in October.
They didn't budge.

melj1213 That sounds like a very sensible policy. Rules without compromising children's safety.

Phones should be in bags or lockers during the day, and turned on when they leave the school gates. I can't even begin to imagine how disruptive phones are to lessons, and an extra layer of ridiculousness teachers have to deal with. Instead of moaning about the policy and whether it's right or not, how about just teach and expect children to stick to the rules? If they have it taken off them I would expect the school to allow them to call a parent who can then decide what to do about safety on the way home. I wonder what everyone did before phones, mind.

Children are in far more danger having phones in school than not. It’s an illusion that it makes them safer on the way to and from school.

The widespread nature of phones makes it far, far more likely that your child will be bullied through technology, have photographs taken of them and used to taunt them, be contacted by predators or be a target for robbery/mugging than it is likely that your child will use that phone to save them from an emergency situation coming home from school. Not to mention the frequency with which they are lost or broken.

Phones do not keep children safe. They expose them to other risks and dangers.

It’s also necessary sometimes for a good but forgetful child to learn a bit of a harsh lesson. Maybe a conscientious teenager who loses their phone for five days after forgetting to put it on silent and thus disturbing a lesson is less likely to grow into one of those adults who forgets to silence their phone in the theatre and upsets hundreds of people including those on stage when it goes off mid-performance!

I think we do all rely on phones now and would struggle without them, but all the more reason to learn phone etiquette and clear boundaries around them from a young age.

I’d support the school in this policy!

The law is pretty straightforward. The school is in loco parentis. So yes, they can take phones. As can parents if, for example, the phone had been a gift from someone else.

Only until the end of the week? Most schools I know of keep hold until the end of term.

Schools aren't doing it for the fun of having a firstly hysterically enraged 14 year old and then their Mum going hammer and tongs about how it's THEFT! THEFT! - they're doing it because nobody wants to be dealing with the making and distribution of child sexual abuse images/films on site, the purchase of drugs, the facilitation of gang activity and grooming, etc - and as a side effect, they don't have to deal with an idiot child texting their Mum because the teacher has said 'Complete this work now or come back for ten minutes after school' or having teenagers fail their GCSEs because they are incapable of following the No Mobile Devices in the Exam Hall instructions.

If you're that bothered by the fact that your child can't possibly manage without a means of producing images for pervy men to 'like' and use as a way of getting into your child's head and ultimately their underwear for a few days, buy a ten quid PAYG jobby.

Oh my god, yes to the phones in exam halls issue! Thank god - I’m grateful every single day - I am no longer a secondary school teacher but towards the end I saw kids so pathologically anxious about separation from their phones that they were smuggling them in their pockets into mock exams. The consequences for this in the real exam is that it’s considered cheating and you fail. But the prospect of putting their phones in another room for the duration of a two hour exam was absolutely unthinkable to some of them regardless of the stakes. It was quite horrifying to see.