School confiscating phone

[Whatshouldmynamebe321]

AIBU to think secondary school should not keep confiscated mobile phone overnight?

12 year old dd walks home alone and school had confiscated her phone during the day (this I fully support as discipline for breaching rules).
But they refused to return at end of day unless a parent collects it.

I'm a single parent and work fulltime, so unavailable during school opening hours to collect it. I feel very upset the school see fit to send her off on a lone walk home without it. I was oblivious, at work assuming she has the device to call for help if there was an emergency. We don't have a landline so, it remains her only method of communication if a disaster happened at home.

Do other schools do this?
I don't understand the logic of it having to be returned to a parent. Surely most parents work and are unable to collect before the school closes which is about 4pm.

@PuttingDownRoots I do think detention shouldn't be the same day. Parents/students should have the chance to make arrangements for alternative ways of getting home or sort any other circumstances (ie a 16 year old who collects their younger sibling from primary school).

Again. Giving a child back it’s phone at the end of the day isn’t a punishment.

There should be a policy around confiscation, a call home etc, allowances for needing it to get home, there was always negotiations with pastoral staff.

The reality is the vast majority of confiscations are the same children over and over, honestly getting their parents down (we used to accept any adult) over and over does help break the cycle. I had a parent leave one for weeks as she was sick of coming to get it. That was the last time.

@mogsrus as people said - pay phones existed.
Also children generally attended schools closer to home so didn't have to rely on public transport as much. If they did (or used a school bus) buses would accept cash if a bus pass was missing (many buses are cash free now) or the bus pass would not be an electronic one.

Who will supervise the litter picking and line writing if it's at lunchtime? And if it's not at lunchtime and it's after school that causes its own issues.

I understand that some schools do take every child's phone. It's not something I'd heard of before this thread. But it's going to cost quite a lot of money to get safes on every classroom and I can just imagine the conflict it would cause if a phone was damaged during this process.

Confiscating phones is not an ideal solution to the problem but the alternatives aren't good either.

Pay phones where I lived after having a good think, I would pass one in just over a mile & we didn’t have a phone at home anyway only one house in the street had a phone

@QuillBill I remember litter picking being a punishment at my secondary (1980s) but I don't remember how it was supervised. That was just a suggestion 🙄
Lines as a punishment were meant to be done at home - they were a "wasting your own time" exercise.
After-school detention isn't always a deterrent for some kids. If school finishes at 3 but detention means 4 in the heads of some teenagers they just accept that school is finishing at 4. They aren't "missing" anything because they haven't left school for the day. Their brain is still in school mode. But going home and being surrounded by their stuff and things they will want to do (which could be anything from computer games to reading a book to soaking in a bubble bath) - having to take time out of that free time to sit down and write something dull 500 times. Well that is an annoying thing to have to do - and therefore is a punishment.

@mogsrus unusual not to have many pay phones in the days when few people had home phones. There were usually lots as they were needed for emergencies.
Of course we must remember that back when very few people had home phones many teens left school at 15 and were out working.
It was a different way of life.
You can't really compare "in my day".

Honestly, I don't know. I don't have an answer.
However, Life and technology move on. So while there's plenty of people here who didn't have mobile phones as kids and managed life perfectly well , the majority of kids now do.
So there does need to be a fair way of dealing with this, and it is up to schools to come up with a solution that doesn't compromise a childs health or safety.

Some schools have apps which are used in class.
In a few years, tech will move on again and bring another load of problems. Banning phones isn't going to be a final solution.

@Needmorelego do you know how difficult it is to get a teenager to Litter pick? Or write lines? They would say no.... and we wouldn't have parental backing either.

Well done school.Same happened with my DS when he was in secondary school. I couldn’t get there for six school days due to my shifts. I told him he caused the problem, therefore it’s not my fault.
Support the school and tell her this on her.
Phones in schools is a bloody nightmare. They are a huge distraction, used for bullying and kids are addicted to the phones.
Here s your chance to do something positive.

@stomachameleon ok forget the litter picking but ok....lines. Don't do the lines at home then get a detention to do them then and a second detention for not doing them in the first place. Don't turn up to detention - get sent to isolation....and so on until it's gets to exclusion. Hopefully most parents wouldn't let it get that far.

The use of phones for monitoring purposes is written into care plans. It would amount to disability discrimination if type 1 diabetics weren't allowed immediate access to their phone. They are an essential piece of kit which support long term health for type 1s and shouldn't be dismissed as 'well, I manage'. If you require a phone for health management purposes, you should have it on you - the school I teach at has a 'no phones' policy but mine is on my desk in case my type 1 son runs into problems. My school has no issue with this.

As a teacher with health problems, you need to advocate for children who's health relies on the use of a phone, not pretending it's unimportant.

Well DDs school is operating this policy with great success.

We're not talking disability discrimination, we are talking about phone use. The student is aware they shouldn't be using it, has been caught using it and now must face the music.

And the music should be faced at school by losing the phone AND at home for going against the school rules and for possibly putting themselves in a position where they'll struggle to get home.

We're not talking disability discrimination, we are talking about phone use. The student is aware they shouldn't be using it, has been caught using it and now must face the music

It might be phone use in the OP's case. But there are type 1s up and down the land that people who are attempting to remove their means of monitoring the condition whilst in school and/or whilst in work. This is not acceptable and absolutely is disability discrimination. Type 1s must be allowed to use their phone for monitoring/cgm and if the pump requires it, the device that controls the pump (the new standard in type 1 management seems to be the dexcom - phone, and omnipod 5 - which has it's own management device (which is actually a recycled mobile phone but which can't be used as a phone). These two devices work together and send messages to each other to ensure that blood glucose are kept as stable as possible. It's bloody amazing technology. And the use of these items is a 'reasonable adjustment' written into care plans. I used to work at my son's school so have friends on staff. When they cracked down on mobile phones - with good reason (long story) - there were parents phoning up and shouting about how unfair it was that the type 1s in school were allowed their phones when their precious children weren't. Unfair! They should try having type bloody 1 and then talk about unfair!

Where has the OP said this phone is used by a type 1 diabetic?? This is about a child using their phone when they shouldn't. They don't need to test their levels!

Sigh. The subject of type 1s needing phones has come up in the course of this conversation.

Sigh. The OP was about a kid messing about with a phone in class.

Sorry all, it was me that brought it up. But as I think I made clear in my original post on the matter, I was specifically addressing a few PPs who were calling for total bans on phones in school. I was merely trying to use one specific example (not that common yet, but getting more so), as to why a total ban could fall foul of disability discrimination if a disabled DC was using their phone for medical reasons.

Anyone who thinks a school can ignore legislation on the basis that parents are all aware of its policies and that no exceptions are allowed is living in cloud cuckoo land, I'm afraid. That's not how the law works.

it is up to schools to come up with a solution that doesn't compromise a childs health or safety.

Why is it up to schools? Why isn't it the parents job to tell their children to obey the rules?

How about if the teacher phones home to say that little Damien or Delilah have been using their phones inappropriately in school, the parents confiscate them so they can't use them in the evenings or at weekends? The child is at home, so no risk to health or safety.

Don’t know how many people it might be relevant to but the Freestyle Libre 2 14 day app should not be used by people under 18 years old.

Don’t be daft. A school can’t take a “suck it up, buttercup” approach to discipline and ignore their duty of care.

Most of the time confiscating a phone will just be an inconvenience but schools need to be aware that some children need phones for essentials.

And again. After many pages, the conversation moved on.

Don’t know how many people it might be relevant to but the Freestyle Libre 2 14 day app should not be used by people under 18 years old

there has been a massive shift towards dexcom and the omnipod 5 recently. When we were on libre, we used the reader (which the school also attempted to ban!) rather than the app.

The school itself is cashless? Quelle surprise!!! Bunch of fucking hypocrites.