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.

If you give a child back their phone at the end of the day it’s not a punishment!

The whole point of getting parents to sign for them is to inconvenience them and get them to help stop DCs using their phones. I’d always ring a parent if a child needed contact with them, one girl was worried about her dog going to the vet, so I rang mum and let her what she said.

I have given children phones back at the end of the day if they walk home alone, have a bus pass. They tend not to be the repeat offenders.
some children have their phones taken off them every other day, usually in class. Children who are meant to sigh their phones in everyday to remove temptation, lie and say they forgot it, get it taken off in class.
It wastes so much time, causes so much class disruption.

Fair enough, presumably by doing that it would have the same consequences to you and your DD?

@kisstheblarney, yes and them too as there is no way I would manage to get there for school pick up

This is the same as our area so my dd carries the right cash in case of emergencies like losing her phone. That's just common sense.

I know no schools where everyone finishes at school pick up time.....

So not sure how they'd be inconvenienced.

Moral of the story I suppose, is teach your child not to break the school phone rules 🤷‍♀️?

Presumably, if you were told the child needed to be off site by 5pm or whatever, you'd use the same strategy to collect her as is she was unwell?

I think the problem here is that society is addicted to phones. The parents need their kids to have phones. The school needs the kids to have a phone. The bus company wants a phone. Therefore the kids have trouble regulating their need to have a phone...

Our school has the same policy and I fully support it. I've told my son that if it gets confiscated it will be at least a week before I collect it. He's managed not to have it confiscated.
Presumably you knew the rule when your daughter started school OP?

👏 👏

A responsible parent!

Absolutely this. DS has had screen addiction problems, which we are having to come up with ever increasingly creative and intensive ways of dealing with. My ideal.is he doesn't have a phone or iPad at all, for now. But he would be unable to do any school work. And as well as being a fiend for the screen, he 8s a school boffin.

For the record, we are now managing it by basically using 3 different apps and checking in regularly. He is so addicted (ADHD thing) that he is doing lots of extra MathsWatch.

The reality is that mobiles are amazing but also equally a safeguarding nightmare. Schools are doing their best to educate parents (and children) in keeping their children safe with smart phones, but the reality is that the advice I would say is ignored by the vast majority of parents. Either because they don’t see the problem, don’t understand how the apps work or their child wouldn’t do that, or you frequently see on here privacy cited. (Nothing is private on a phone - anything you say can now be screenshoted and sent to thousands within seconds plus the data harvesting from some apps.) I’m one of the few parents I know who checks her DD’s phone - I don’t read things but generally just check she’s not messaging random people.

I wish that any parent who doesn’t see an issue could spend some time shadowing a secondary DSL/pastoral leader and you’d realise the extent of the problem.

Schools don’t get everything right; it’s impossible. However if you’re told mobiles out of sight and off during the day, it’s not a difficult rule to remember. Parents can support by making sure there’s a safe place in their bag, set the settings so they can’t use it and then there’s less temptation to check it and it won’t go off. Making sure their child has a watch and not one linked to their phone. You can’t say well they need to get used to it in working life, there are jobs where if you were to take your phone or any unauthorised tech in, it would be gross professional misconduct.

The reality is that if we want less draconian phone rules in schools, we have to take responsibility for the way our children use their phones.

@kisstheblarney presumably I would have to - fortunately I was only musing and it's never happened

School policies are for school employees. You own that phone because you purchased it. Regardless of their in-class discipline, that phone needs to be returned at the end of the school day.
No landline and no access to communicating with you in an emergency leaves a child extremely vulnerable and school are over stepping.
You are the parent, they have parental responsibility (given by you) during the school day only.
Kick off. I would.

Even though the policy will have been made clear at the start of the year, and you will have agreed to it as part of your child's attendance?

And
School policies are for school employees

That's one of the most nonsensical statements I've read here! So the school uniform policy, homework policy etc don't apply either?!

But you are 'musing' that the school would be punished instead of your dd as they would be forced into keeping her.

Why would you not muse about making sure she has money to get home if she loses her bus pass rather than muse about her being taken into care as you wouldn't be able to collect her before five?

Definitely not a first time offence it seems. All schools I've worked at get the parents to collect after 3rd phone confiscation. Phones cause a lot of issues in secondary schools (much more than parents are probably aware).

And when a video of your child appears on the toilet at school or getting changed for PE or having mashed potato flung at them you will have no problems with that of course.

The school are saying they will return the phone to the owner. Which is the parent. If the owner cannot collect they will hold it til they can.

Mine kept getting theirs confiscated for getting it out in school. So I insist they leave it at home now. They have a cheap 15 quid Tesco phone in their bag that you can only call or text on for emergencies

Kick off. I would.

Because parents kicking off when they don't like their child being expected to follow rules is going so well for schools. There's not a well established problem with behaviour in schools at all.

The no landline, no emergency phone etc don't work as arguments because they're not the school's problem.

In fact if a parent genuinely feels their child is unsafe without a phone, surely they'd have a plan that doesn't involve them kicking off because their child chose to use their a phone in the school day? They'd have a dumb phone with long battery life in a school bag that's not attractive to use during the day or they'd make arrangements at home so the child's safety isn't dependent on their mobile phone having battery/not getting stolen/not getting misplaced/not breaking.

This poster hits the nail on the head:
The reality is that if we want less draconian phone rules in schools, we have to take responsibility for the way our children use their phones.

@KrisAkabusi so children can't make one mistake ever?
The punishment here doesn't fit the crime.
It should start off with a punishment that actually affects the child - detention or (as I said above) a good old fashioned 500 lines of "I will not use my phone in school". These are punishments that take away a child's free time. This affects them.
A parent having to leave work or pay for a taxi could affect the whole family because they now can't afford food for the rest of the week.
I'm sorry but that shouldn't be the punishment.
HOWEVER.....the punishment should get more if the child keeps re-offending.

A lot of replies here along the lines of 'my little Johnny had his taken but he's a good boy and never causes issues so seems harsh'. I get the perspective of tackle the kids who cause the repeated issues but the problem is if you bend the rule for one you then have no leg to stand on with the kids who do repeatedly offend because my god do they know if someone else was treated with exception and they will absolutely exploit it and use their parents to try back them up in situations like this. It is an absolute waste of time for staff who are stressed to the max and leaving in droves because they can't get on with their actual job for constantly being tied up with crap like this.

@BambooFridge I was thinking they would be punished as well as not instead of
Anyway time to start work

I don't really understand all the drama of "they are extremely vulnerable without a phone"
There weren't phones in my day, I never needed to use a payphone, I just caught the bus. If something bad had happened, I would have asked an adult women to help.
I don't think it's that scary to be without a phone. Are people not being a tad dramatic?

a good old fashioned 500 lines of "I will not use my phone in school". These are punishments that take away a child's free time. This affects them.

And if the child refuses? Then what?

The school can keep the phone overnight but only if they are prepared to be held responsible if anything happened to that child on their way home from school and they weren't able to call for assistance.

I know plenty of kids walked home from school before phones - I was one of them. However, a child having a phone now means they can call if there's a problem or be located on a tracker if needed. It makes them a bit safer, just like seatbelts etc which also weren't always available.

Obviously anything happening is very unlikely for most children. I wouldn't want to be the headteacher though defending themselves in the event of something having gone wrong.

My DD has ASD. She needs her phone to call for help if needed and we track her to know where she is - she knows this and it gives her security knowing we can go to her if necessary. We have needed to do this several times. Any teacher confiscating her phone would be risking causing a safeguarding issue. It's never come up and hopefully never will. I think it's a bit of a rocky path though for any school to take when punishments cross over into out of school times and locations.