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.

When the US Embassy was in Grosvenor Square you couldn't take phones in when applying for a visa. Given people might travel for hours for the appointment, it was a complete pain so a local pharmacy had a cracking side-hustle in storing your phone while you were at the embassy...

I accidentally pressed yabu, sorry op. I'd hate this. Doesn't sound safe at all.

We had phone boxes though didn't we.

That seems like a very good compromise.

I would not be happy with this and be demanding a meeting with the head of year/headteacher.

My child needs a phone for me to contact him if I am stuck in traffic on the motorway trying to get to work and unable to get to him for pick up time so we can make different arrangements if needed.
Currently the school rules are phones off in bags.

My 9 year old cycles 8km to school and back everyday. He has a phone in case of accidents.

He hands it in to phone jail in the morning and gets it back in the evening.

It also allows us to track him if he is delayed in afterschool activities, going to and from football pratice etc.

Or as happened last week, he had a flat tyre on the way to school, so we were able to drive, pick him up and get him to school on time.

The world has moved on and most of us lived within close proximty to school and would travel back and forth with the rest of kids from the estate together.

We are the youngest people in our estate by about 40 years, no other kids going to school

See this why my school is quite sensible

60%+ of students travel by bus and the catchment radius is something like 8 miles

So schools must be off in bags during school time but they realise they have a purpose after school is bus is late or whatever. Also if a club is cancelled for whatever reason then parents can be notified that they're coming home by bus need earlier pick up without hassling office staff.

My son’s school has a locker in each form room. Phones handed over at registration and returned at end of day. Seems sensible. Not sure would be keen on no phones at all.

We somehow managed to get to and from school without smartphones in years gone by.

I lived in a world where you could smoke inside pubs and restaurants, where rear seats didn't need seatbelts ... I survived.

What a nonsensical thing to say...

I mean if you're going to go at it from that angle smart phone use is starting to prove as harmful to young brains and health as smoking would be.

I think people willfully ignore this by saying well we can't do anything about it now.

I mean in that - the world moves on and things change. Just because something was a certain way 25 years ago, doesn't mean it applies today ...

Smartphone use is harmful to health, that's well documented (I'm not talking about radiation causing tumours or bollocks like that, I'm talking about children carrying around unfettered access to the internet in their pockets 24/7). Not all change is good and it should not be accepted as the status quo.

I don't think it has done anyone's mental health any good being expected to be contactable all the time, put it that way.

Is this a state or independent school?

We've been lucky in that the school paid for the pouches and they are on loan to the children until they leave in year 11. Six formers are allowed to keep their phones but are expected not to use them during classes. They've been a great solution the phones during school hours issue.

People who say 'We had no phones and we were fine' - it's distressing to wonder how many child abductions or murders would have been avoided if that child had had a mobile phone. To alert their parents where they were, to call the police, to call their parents - or even just for the assailant to not have taken the risk in the first place as they'd know that the person would be likely to have a way of contacting someone. We'll never know - but I do think we should stop pretending that everyone was fine without phones. And that's not even counting the number of worried parents walking the streets looking for a child who hasn't come home because their bus was cancelled, or kids who've spent hours sitting outside because a parent couldn't tell them they were held up and to go to grandmas, etc etc.

My kids have smartphones but no access to the internet. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Parental controls are so good now.

You do realise that children are groomed in massive numbers over the internet? Way way more than the extremely tiny amount who were ever abducted and/or murdered, which was very rare statistically even in pre-smartphone days.

Of course I realise that. I'm not saying 'Having phones is better than not having phones'. I'm saying that having phones could make kids safer in the circumstances where they previously weren't safe.

Your argument is like me saying that people can get to hospital faster now that we have ambulances so we shouldn't put them in a pony and cart, and you saying 'You do realise that cars kill people don't you'. Yes. I do. Cars exist and phones exist and while they both have their problems, some things that were less safe without them can be safer.

At my ds school they can hand them in at the office. At dds secondary it was a brick phone only, to be handed in but only brought in with prior permission.
Either way is sensible, neither of my kids had phones until the summer after GCSEs but we live within a 15 minutes walk of both schools and neither child did after school activities plus both sets of grandparents lived within 5 minutes walk of either school.

Can you share the studies on that?

All the studies I find generally tend to centre around excessive use. Or extreme cases. Where extreme cases have always happened. Just in a different way. I am sure most people agree that excessive use of anything isn’t great.

Different opinion here...
I think we just need to teach phones off / not used /in pockets or bags etc in class. It must be an expectation.
The comments, "However did we cope before" are moot. It's 2024 and a different world. How did we cope without cars? Supermarkets? Plumbing? Pick anything for comparison.
There are several reasons kids/people in general are reluctant/find it difficult to put their phones down. We need to teach and practice good habits.
ETA
I don't think I even agree with phonos to be locked away, but I def don't agree with seizing personal property. Breaking the rules should have consequences, ie detention.

@TeleGardenGnome surely he knows your phone number by heart and so he can call it in an emergency? Which is what he might need to do if his phone was lost/flat/broken anyway? He should know your number? I know you don't want to get him to approach strangers but sometimes needs must - they need to be taught to find someone trustworthy to approach in an emergency. Or even use the station office phone.

If this is the school I think it is based on your various comments then I think I know which it is as I know other families there. Surely you knew the school policy when you chose to accept the offer of a place there?

As for thinking the metal detectors are there to scan for phones - have you considered that that might not be the primary purpose they are there, and the school has put them in for your son's safety?

I'm pretty sure what's well documented is actually unfettered access to social media rather than smartphones per se.

The smartphone is just a piece of tech, which can be put to a variety of uses. In my DCs' cases it is essential to how they control their chronic, potentially life-threatening, medical condition, so it most certainly is NOT harmful to their health.

I saw a mobile locker at a school on the TV news last night. Seemed a good idea and solution. Many schools have smaller boxes for pupils with GCSE exams as taking a phone into the room can cause disqualification etc.

Some schools get a bit above themselves with their total bans. Trying to uninvent the wheel. As a teacher I’d not be happy about random bag searches - from both a legal and a moral viewpoint. What about 6th forms where some will be over 18 and so adults?

My, now adult, children lived near their school, attended before phone ownership and social media etc was as common and also before schools came up with their simplistic solution to a problem that throws up bigger problems.

To my mind its better to teach safe and appropriate use of such devices, theres more to school than the 3Rs and pupils will have their phones on later with all the attendant problems with them for some.

These Schools are just washing their hands of an aspect of adolescent life.

To throw something else into the discussion……
A few years ago my school was OFSTEDed. My class were doing small detailled practical work.
I told them to take pictures of their work and email it to my school email address.

We then stopped at various points to all look at the photos, via projector, taken of their individual work and comment.
Smooth lesson, progress made all pupils could see what they and others had done.
I was given outstanding. One of the 6 outstanding lessons in the school.
Mentioned as good practice in the final report.

pupils need to learn how to use phones etc as a tool.

As a pupil I learnt how to use a calculator - the world didn’t fall apart, we didn’t go down a wormhole writing boobies.