To be annoyed by total phone ban

[TeleGardenGnome]

My child's school which is a busy city location has a total phone ban. So you aren't allowed to take any type of phone to school at all even if it stays hidden in a bag and is on silent and never used. They do bag searches and use metal detectors to find students breaking the rules.

If your child's phone is found they get a detention and you can only get it back by visiting the school in person.

So yesterday my child's phone was found in a bag search and removed. There were awful transport issues and it took them several hours to get home. In the meanwhile we had no way to contact each other.

I can't get the phone back due to work and my husband being away for work. It just stresses me out that he won't be able to get in touch if there's a problem. Expressing my feelings here as there is no point complaining to the school. They don't listen to parental feedback.

Nope they do not allow any phones at all. I thought I had said that several times! I would be delighted if my child was able to hand the phone in or store it in a locker. I have even been searching online to see if there is a locker near the school where he could leave it. Some one suggested newsagents will sometimes do this. Gap in the market near some schools to have little lockers in a newsagent perhaps.

Surely the way forward is not stripping back school budgets to ridiculous levels.

They could ban smart phones.

You can still get the little ones that you can send texts or call on.

I don't personally agree with the rules. But the rules are known and enforced. So I am not sure complaining that they were enforced is reasonable per se !

Any kid who's changing buses are probably in a town with a phone box.

There are no phone boxes and many kids change buses in this city and nearby town - they tend to have phones to deal with any problem.

There's supposedly 20,000 working phone booths left in UK but I can't think of one in 5 nearby urban areas at all.

You make it sound as if thete was a box every 2 meters. Boxes were few and far between

It's a ridiculous rule.
Where I am, the only way kids can have a bus ticket is to have an app/virtual ticket.
So they have a load of kids stranded with no way to get to school.

I'm not quite sure what the answer is here but certainly phones should returned at the end of the school day as the absence of them could be seen to pose a safeguarding risk.
Assuming there are a number of parents who feel the same then I'd suggest getting something in writing from a group of like-minded people which lay out the concerns etc. and take it to the board of governors of the school.

Take the time off work if you need to deal with the school, why wouldn’t you? Your child’s safety is far more important than your job.

OP has made it more than clear that they don't do that.

Would be lucky to find one though they just don't exist in most places.

YANBU. My autistic, just turned 11 DS has to take the bus to school on his own. I'm currently injured and would never have agreed to this otherwise. I'd be furious if his school took away my only means of checking he's safe.

Good grief. How did children EVER cope without their own mobile phone?!!!

And how did the PARENTS cope without their children having their own mobile phone?

Utterly batshit! Get a grip @TeleGardenGnome

And as pps have said, surely there is a closer school than one that they have to get to via tube trains. Why does he not get a bus? How far away is this school (in miles?) If this happens a lot, why do you not look for a school closer to home?

It's not a question of complaining to the school. It's an issue of a school having a silly rule that impacts on their pupils' lives and safety outside school, and whether that should even be permitted.

It sounds unnecessary to be using a metal detector to search bags, do they also search the kids. Could he use a travel type bum bug that sits under his clothes (they thin and normally used for cash)

That was a monstrous bus driver, this little boy could have an old fashioned type small mobile for calling or texting his mum in the future.

My child's school has a ban. Totally ineffective, kids just sneak them in and check their phones a lot. They cause so much disruption. So now they take them off them in the morning and lock them away. But still kids are sneaking them in, pretending they left their phone at home. I hate phones in schools, the disruption alone is unacceptable. That's before getting into the bullying via whatsapp, the viewing of inappropriate content, the non stop distraction, the taking of images without the person's consent, etc etc etc. Only phones I would support in schools would be dumb phones. I simply can't believe that a smart phone does anything but put kids in more harms way (muggers in real.life, God knows what online). I'm sure Sarah Everard and other women who have been attacked had smart phones on them. They are not some sort of shield against predators. Only possible use is to phone if transport from school goes awry. Every other reason parents give just never stands up to scrutiny.

I've put an Apple Tag in my son's bag.

It's really useful.

We coped because there were payphones reasonably easily available. Guess what, that is no longer the case.

What is their reasoning for the ban?

At my secondary, we had a total phone ban. One day there was an unexpected leak and they had to close the school. The teachers then had to very bashfully ask the students if they had a phone to call their parents on 😂After that phones were allowed (but off, in a bag).

My child doesn't want to change their school. It is not a trivial thing to change secondary school. Look at all the threads where a child changes school and gets assigned to bottom sets because the others are full. It's difficult potentially both socially and academically. Sometimes problems don't have easy solutions. Going to investigate android tags.

Nothing is having a greater impact on the well being and safety of children than smart phones themselves!

What about smart watches??

You could try a watch phone? They sell on amazon for 50 and work well. My ds uses that and it basically looks like a watch, but they can text and make calls with it. Plus you can use the locating device on it. So perhaps you could get around it that way.

My kid wouldn't get to school without his phone, the bus pass is electronic only 🤷🏼‍♀️

The only way you're going to address this is to make it very, very inconvenient for the school to have this policy.

I'd start ringing the school office daily if there are any problems with your DC's transport home and ask them to pass on a message to your DC. I'd also ask your DC to return to school and ask the school office to contact you if they have any issues on the way home.

Encourage other parents to do the same. If the office starts getting dozens of calls daily and being asked to contact students, then it might make the school think twice.