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.

My daughter had her phone confiscated at school and was told that a parent would have to come and collect it from the office. She was a week without her phone because I was busy.
She didn't get her phone out of her bag again at school.
It was a good lesson for her

It's pretty bloody bulky for a start. And what are they going to do with it?

I don't know what every teacher does with the box during the day but there don't seem to have been huge issues.

@JassyRadlett I'm just curious how they can guarantee they won't be tampered with and the contents stolen.

Schools could buy a cheap safe, which is screwed into the wall. I think removing phones in the day will be the future. Crazy how much time is wasted and it would resolve SO many issues.
My DN just walks out of school is she doesn't like the punishments from school. Not sure she would do that and leave her precious phone behind. She has a dad who backs her, so school stand no chance at discipling her.

So many of my students refuse to leave their bags when the fire bell goes. They're more concerned about their phone than the safety of their classmates. I imagine there'd be at least one who would stubbornly refuse to vacate without the safe being unlocked and then being given their phone first.

Ok.....my plan B solution.
Simple rule - "don't see it, don't hear it". In other words it's in your bag and switched off.
If caught being used or rings in a lesson then a sliding scale of punishment.
So 1st offence confiscated until the end of the day but returned to the student after school with a letter to the parents that has to be returned and signed saying this has happened. Student also has to do 100 lines of "I will not use my phone in school".
If it happens again then the punishment goes up.

The form teachers who implement this are enthusiastic about the overall impact it's having, my son's teacher was clear that they'd all pushed to have the original trial mad permanent, the process seems swift and uncomplicated, children seem unremarkably competent in identifying and taking their own phones from the box at the end of the day (they'll all have security on them and any missing phone means all phones back in the box and handed out one by pen and unlocked in front of the teacher - this has not happened so far). It gets rid of phones at break and lunch times, removes the temptation/disruptive element using them at the wrong times. As a parent, im a huge fan.
I'm sure they might be happy, though the fact they're happy having yet another task given to them and more time taken up at the end of the day (which either comes out of the directed time budget so is taking time away from T&L/pastoral responsibilities, or isn't being counted in directed time so they're being expected to take on even more for free) would have me wondering what the issues were like that additional workload was deemed worth it.
Are staff expected to be available indefinitely so that a student can collect their phone after they've been kept back to speak to a member of staff? If they have a detention do they get it back before the detention or after? Who's responsible for the phone until the end of the detention or are staff expected to be on site until after all detentions are finished and in a set place just in case someone needs a phone?

How does the put all the phones back in the box work if students have detentions, different lessons to get to, haven't got the ability to hang around indefinitely because their bus/train leaves and the teacher needs to put everything back in the box and sort individual phones out?

As a parent I'd not be happy with my child's phone being in a box all day in that situation. I'd also not be happy if my child was late home having missed their bus/train because Mr Smith decided everyone would be held back whilst he tried his best to work out where some phones had gone.

Yep, just as with any other contraband. I'm not against confiscation.

The simplest thing is for parents to hold themselves and their children accountable to the policies they agreed to when they enrolled their child. If there is a genuine reason why this is an issue on one occasion, the parents will probably find schools are generally quite supportive.

Honestly, I haven't gone into all the ins and outs but it seems to work, staff seem to like it. It doesn't seem to have been a massive issue, talking to parents with older kids before but it was felt that a device-free space in school, starting with the younger years and then being implemented gradually throughout the school, would be beneficial.

But I suspect all schools work very differently - it would be vanishingly rare for a student not to be at afternoon registration/form time. Detentions/other activities take place after that - not least because most staff have their own forms to deal with at registration times. Kids have their phones on them after registration, just as they do if they have activities before school.

So all kids are there. Kids go and get the phones they handed in that morning. If there's a discrepancy between phone and owners, phones go back in at that point (in theory, I'm not sure if/how frequently it happens. Doesn't seem to have been an issue in DS's form so far.

We're an urban school with a catchment of about 700m so no buses to worry about.

Maybe we've just got a more honest student body that this doesn't seem to be much of an issue. It'd be easier and lower risk to nick someone's phone from their blazer or their bag at lunchtime than from the box at form time when everyone else is literally looking at the box of phones. I'm sure it's not perfect and there are problems and issues.

But yeah, I much prefer my kid having a device-free space when he's at school. Not that he's a big user of his own phone - he barely touches it - but I don't think they contribute much to a positive environment at school and I've heard horror stories from other schools of how devices are used/shared/nicked at break and lunch times, let alone the classroom disruption.

All systems have upsides and downsides. A system doesn't have to be perfect or cost-free to be an alternative option.

@annahay that's it - a 1st offense punishment (phone confiscated until end of day, lines and a letter home) should for most parents mean a telling off at home plus a lecture about not doing it again.

That is rubbish. We are obliged to educate our children and we do not have a choice of schools. We pretend to accept whatever nonsense the school forces us to agree to as a condition of our child getting he place she needs, just like we agree to googles ts and cs depite having not read them, because there is not choice.

I work in a huge secondary, we don't have form times in the morning, just in the afternoon and not everyday.
On silent and in bags is the rule and I'd say 98% of students follow this. It's always the same ones who don't.

JassyRadlett
It obviously works for that setting. T he teacher in me is interested in how it works because most schools don't have students with their form teachers at the beginning and end of the day.

If they've timetabled it within a teaching timetable so there's an allocated time within teaching hours to sort phones out, I can see it working.
It would surprise me if a school did timetable 10 minutes at the start and end of the day though because even if the task only takes 5 minutes that's lesson changeover time to consider and many schools use their 15-20 minutes form time to cover pshe materials or other curriculum things.
If they've timetabled it within the day, I'd be more on board from a workload point of view and from a dismissal at hometime point of view, but would still have some reservations.

Of course the school might be an academy that's abandoned directed time and the Burgundy Book so my concern about directed time would be neither here nor there.

@AnonnyMouseDave you're obliged to educate your child. You're not obliged to have them in a school.

DDs school only has form first thing. I thought that was usual now we have electronic registers.

Quite a lot of parents who pick their children’s phones up pretend that they haven’t and keep them for the rest of the week, to teach them a lesson. Not everyone has an issue with this.

School should ring and tell you, I’ve had parents turn up 5 minutes after they’ve been called because they are so upset that their child’s phone has been taken off them.

We do the phones in a box thing and it works very well - anyone who is late arriving or early leaving hands theirs to reception instead of their form teacher so they can get it and there is a limited window for collecting it at the end of the day.

What percentage of parents have the time and skillset to properly educate their child at home, and ensure they get the benefits of socialisation that schools give?

@AnonnyMouseDave very few I imagine, but that doesn't make my point not true. It is a choice to undermine schools by thinking your child should be the exception. A child's success at school is far more likely with parental buy in.

@AnonnyMouseDave then if you've got no choice you'll need to adhere to the rules.

@AnonnyMouseDave

You can't home educate as well at secondary, primary yes, very easy to achieve academic advancement. Socially a bit more difficult.

Secondary would be very difficult, what about science? how do you do the experiments? Media studies, without a fancy media suite? Photography, without all the tech. foreign languages, woodworking/textiles...not to mention core subjects

You would need serious investment and skills to teach so many things.

That's why they need to follow the rules, millions of children never get a chance at an education. Very frustrating that so many children care more about a phone than making the most out of the best/free opportunity.

I worked at an independent school for a while where virtually everyone in years 7-9 had top of the range iPhones. They were collected in at morning registration and placed in padded bags and then each form teacher had to put the bags in a box and take it to the admin office. At the end of the day the poor overworked office manager had to run round with the heavy boxes getting them to all the relevant classes (which weren't necessarily form groups). If there was a trip or something she had to be aware of that too.

It was a ginormous hassle!

If this is a policy which is available to parents before their child started school, then OK to me.

@Phineyj Yes that was our experience, mine had the most expensive, recent phones.
Dad provided them not me, I think any old iPhone will do the job at that age. They don't appreciate or respect expensive tech imho. My DD would just leave hers lying around in shops, airplanes, on hammocks on holiday. Very annoying and stressful.
I feel for school staff having to mange that, as the drama if they go missing/get damaged etc would be ridiculous.

I know I’m a miserable old goat but my dc is older than 12 and has no phone. They walk to and from school. If they need to speak to me they use the school office phone. If they need to speak to me in an emergency they know how to ask a stranger/go into a shop etc. The benefits of them not having a phone yet FAR outweigh the minuscule risk that they might not be able to call me in an emergency (in a real emergency I’d rather they call the police!). They are also in a minority of their peers not to have been mugged for their phone walking home….!