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.

This is such a lazy argument. The world was different when we were kids. It's the same for every generation of adults.

Life changes. Things change. Just because you experienced something as a child it doesn't mean it works now.

What cloud-cuckoo utopia were you living in? There has always been a dearth of phoneboxes, and talking to strangers was not encouraged, even 'back then'.
And ask to use a phone in a shop? Well if that happened then, why can't it happen now?

Is DS's school quite small by any chance?

It's not really practical for your average secondary school to collect all the phones in, in the morning (morning registration is often just in the first lesson so would eat into lesson time), store them somewhere securely during the day so they can be matched with owners and redistribute them later (bearing in mind that the final lesson of the day might be with a different group of people to the first lesson, so you can't just save by class).

My DC's school has a phone ban, but they are allowed to be stored in lockers and only confiscated if seen. What's the rationale for your school's total ban OP? Are there ways of working round it - e.g. would they accept brick phone?

Yes, most schools are fine with it being switched off and in a bag.
I do wonder if something else happened? Did it go off?

I 100 agree phones have no place in education establishments however I can't understand why they can't be used to and from school!

DDs school has gone the other way and embraces phones. They use them in lessons for various bits of work but they do have to be on silent and in bags when they’re not using them. Free to use them at break and lunchtime. I don’t think they have any more behavioural or bullying problems than any other school.

It isn't a lazy argument, don't be so bitchy and dismissive. It is a fact, not a viewpoint.
Of course the world changes, but not to the extent that children are in mortal danger if they don't have access to a mobile.
What a generation of needy kids you will be raising

Yes, most schools allow that, I have to say! This school is an exception I think.

I would be tempted to comply, but make it inconvenient for the school as well as you. Any significant issue, he asks the office to contact you, walking back to school if necessary to do so. Any significant issue, you phone the office and ask to pass a message to him. If they won’t, or the office is shut after school, then you ask what other solutions they can put in place, given he’s not allowed a phone. Keep it polite, and assume their good intent, and that they don’t want him lost in the city with no way to contact you, either.

My view is coloured by having two DC who both commute by tube/train, and it’s fairly frequent that they text to say ‘Will be very late, no tube so diverting via two buses’, and they use Citymapper to work out which two buses.

No they have no way of working around it. You can apply to the headmaster for special permission which I did and was turned down. So my child has just been hiding their phone but was caught out yesterday. If I buy them a brick then they will get a 2 hour detention if caught again and now they have been caught they may be extra checks. A lot of parents use air tags but I don't have an apple phone. Maybe I will need to buy one. Its all a bit crazy.

Is this an independent school?

Metal detectors and bag searches? Is it prison? Ridiculous, I’d push back on that. My kids travel an hour across the city to school, they go to extra curricular activities straight from school. They text me so I can pick them up from the station but sometimes trains are cancelled or delayed. Schools have no right to dictate what students carry with them on the way to and from school.

The state education system has banned phones where I live but they don’t stop them bringing them into school, they just can’t use them during school hours.

Nothing happened. They search children's bags and use metal detectors to find them.

I would just air tag him

What kind of school is this? I haven't heard of this procedure anywhere.

Imagine calling someone bitchy and dismissive after saying this...

Some of us lived in a pre-mobile phone world. We survived

Some of us also lived in a world where car seats weren't used, it was OK to give your child a slap and dog shit didn't require picking up. Things have progressed for the better and all your comment does is show how little understanding you have of that

It’s progress isn’t it? A device that allows people to contact other people instantly, and also source any information you might need. I’m sure everyone from the Neanderthals to the Tudors to Victorians would bite your hand off to have that. Technology should be embraced, not shunned.

Shops often don't have phones nowadays.

if they do, they are in an area of the shop where the general public are not allowed for safety reasons.

when I was at secondary school in the 80s, there were multiple phone booths in my school, there was a phone box near the bus stop (both ways) and many payphones on the route. There were also shops with payphones (if you didn't want to go and ask to use the phone ...) Shop owners were also less distrustful of teenagers.

Point is, today's teens have grown up in a world where it's expected that people have a phone with them all the time and to have access to their phone's abilities. Expecting teens to manage without it, for no good reason, is ridiculous.
I bet there are not many adults who habitually use mobile phones, who leave them at home when they go to work, even if the phone is not allowed at work.

There are kids phone watches with 4g and specific limited capacity to work as phones so child can call selected contacts through an app on contacts mobile. I dont think they'd work for bus passes but might help with safety concerns.

I would if I could but I won't be the first parent to complain. The school doesn't listen to parents. I wish I could move my child (because of the rigidity and lack of communication with parents not the phone per se ) but they are settled with friends and want to stay.

My son's school have a strict policy of no smart phones, but kids are allowed dumb phones turned off and battery removed in their bags which seems a good compromise. Also London

Would he be allowed a smart watch?

Metal detectors are because kids bring knives into schools etc. I wish I was kidding but it's reality. Even in my rural secondary we had a lockdown as an excluded pupil was on site with a knife.

I disagree with phones being excluded totally. My son's school they have 'yondr' pouches their phones go on at start of day and they lock, and have to be released on their way out. Savvy kids have 2, obviously but it does compromise in that they still have their phones on transport/journeys but not accessible in school

could they use a smart watch? doesn’t need to be an apple one but most will have a gps function and some even allow calls?

I agree that a total phone ban is ridiculous. You can get tags for devices other than Apple. We use the Samsung ones.