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.

Why would the students who break rules follow that one? I am sure they could find a way to bring phones in if they really wanted to. It just punishes the students who don't break rules and more to the point alienates parents.

And yet people on this thread have mentioned schools that do get it right. Why do you know better than those schools and the people on this thread who are parents of secondary school aged children?

I feel like there should be new laws that non tech products and services must be available at the same price to those that do not have phones.

It is getting ridiculous if you can't get on a bus without a smart phone. What if you don't want one or its lost or broken or you can't afford one!

Fair point!

There will be other parents at those schools who will disagree with that.

Many parents are reasonable and accept reasonable rules. Many parents are unreasonable and will complain VERY angrily that the rules are unfair.

Well that’s exactly what did happen which is why I said that it wasn’t 100% effective 😂

Well no schools either of my 2 youngest ever attended would have been allowed to have a complete ban. Not because I am a stroppy parent who thinks the rule doesn't apply to my kids but because they used their phones as an essential medical device. Increasing numbers of DCs will be in the same boat over the next few years.

That is different, and it will be up to those children who need to have them for medical reasons not to abuse their position.

By far the majority will not need them for medical reasons though.

Of course. It's a small number, and though it will be growing it will never approach being a significant minority.

I am purely pointing out that a total ban is not be possible in these circumstances, nor even a policy of having phones in a bag or a locker and off – the phones need to be on and with the pupil at all times for the tech to work.

My sons school has the policy that phones must remain in lockers during the day. Any phone outside a locker is confiscated.

But the school enforces the use of several apps themselves. They have the schedule, homework, testsresults, messaging with teachers, everything in an app. So I have mixed feelings about a total ban. It would mean they have to go back to paper, and they won’t do that either.

My child's school also sets homework to be done on apps. I assume that the idea is for them to use a computer at home. Or to have a phone at home that they aren't allowed to bring to school.

It is very frustrating that they do this. Some people are doing home school just to their children a chance away from computers.

Yes well, it is called “homework”, but they get time during classes to work on it. And sometimes they have special hours to work on the homework together in school. So it is crucial to have access to it at school.

Keeping in mind 30 phones at an average of £400 a time, is £12,000.
Where does the form teacher store them, its a heck of a lot of value to have in a desk drawer?
Are they insured while in the schools possession?
How do they catalogue the type and condition of each phone?
How do they know the kids are handing in their real phone and not a 2nd old phone?

Just as society has in recent years created concepts like “The right to privacy” “The right to repair,” “The right to be forgotten” and so on, maybe we also need to consider something akin to “The right to function in society without a smartphone.”

What I mean by that is that society needs to think very carefully about heading down a path where it becomes impossible for people do anything - pay for stuff, use public transport, whatever - without a smartphone.

It risks creating a situation where either preteens and teens MUST be given smartphones with permanent access to them (and the evidence on this being a bad idea are only continuing to pile up) OR having zero independence outside the home, which is also a bad idea, as it stunts their development and increases the burden on parents. It’s also like to increase phone addiction among adults, and the evidence on that is only continuing to mount as well. It’s daft for society to moan vaguely about the societal effects of everyone constantly having a smartphone in their hand, getting it out ever 2 secs, endless fiddling and message-checking, while at the same time sleepwalking into a situation where it ends up being impossible to basically leave the phone without the fucking thing and you HAVE to get it out and look at it a million times a day.

Society must, IMO, ensure with every process that goes on that there is always a non-smartphone alternative to stuff. Dumb phones with no internet access must continue to exist and be available. Public transport must not offer smartphones as the only way to pay - if they want to go cashless, fine, but cards should be offered as an option too. Ditto payments of various kinds.

There is currently a bigger push (compared to five years ago) to really look into the effects of 24/7 smartphone availability on kids, so these things need to be unpicked and discussed at the policy level.

I think most of those are questions for the school, not me as a parent.

I do know (and have seen) the lock boxes they're stored in.

We're asked to fill in a form at the start of the year saying whether our child regularly brings a phone to school and what make/model it is.

As far as I'm aware they don't catalogue type or condition. We're aware that phones are brought to school at our own risk - the same as if phones are in pockets or bags.

I'm sure there are still kids who try to break the rules. But the feedback from the school - at least the teachers I've spoken to as well as the messaging from the head - is that in the two years since they have taken this approach, they have found it beneficial. I'm grateful for it.

The issue with phones isn't phones, or many of the utility type apps, nobody is spending hours on checking Google Classroom, National Rail Enquiries or McDonald's app.

The places people loose hours is, social media, Facebook, tic-toc, snapchat, youtube those apps need to be more heavily regulated.

Well I'd certainly be asking the questions if it was may kids properly that was getting taken off them. A box of 30 phone's is bound to be a target for theft or vandalism. Theres bound to be a few seriously high value phones in each box.
If the box is emptied or taken completely whos insurance is covering it?

Do the kids get given a receipt to prove they've handed the phone over daily? If a phone goes missing in the schools possession how do you prove the phone was handed it?

What safe guarding is there for each teacher to make sure they don't get falsely accused of theft? Either phones not handed in but kid claims they handed it over?

Ive just reread your post, phones are handed in at your own risk. Wtf. No way should that be happening without the school carrying proper insurance. The total value is each box must be thousands. Its not like they are low cost items that are easily replaced. I dont think id would want responsibility for a box of phones at work.
Its not like jackets or jumpers that are fairly low cost phones are blinking expensive.

Like I said, I don't know what the situation with insurance is or the details of how they administer it including insurance, storage of the boxes, etc. It's how the school runs things and if I want my child to take a phone to school with him, this is the condition under which we do it. If people aren't happy with that, then I assume they just don't let their child take their phone to school.

Any personal possessions I send to school with my child are at our risk, not the school's. I'm not stupid enough to give my child a ridiculously expensive phone; if other parents are then that's a risk they're assuming for themselves.

TBH I'm pretty happy that his phone is safer, less liable to loss and damage and more secure in a locked padded box than in his school bag or his pocket. As far as I'm concerned they're doing me a favour on that count as well as removing phones during school time - with all the issues people have mentioned above.

Well, parents can solve the issue by not sending their kids in with an expensive phone, then.

UK parents are so bloody entitled and stroppy, it's no wonder teachers are leaving the profession in droves.

Just scrolling a bit mindlessly and reading and had a sudden image of people coming on MN complaining about all the tweens and teens who want to use their phone to call home everytime a train or bus is cancelled. In London that could be a large number of kids effected by a single cancellation, especially if other school's do the same ban. I can't imagine many adults being happy the 10th time a secondary school kid asks to use their phone in an hour, as some PPs suggested they should do in a fix.

Schools can give themselves less work by telling children to look after their own property.

Schools taking phones or any other items of kids is ludicrous. The more I think about it the stupider I think it is.

I completely agree with this comment.

It's not about looking after the property, is it? It's removing the distraction and behavioural issue during the school day and reducing how much kids come to rely on the hit they get from their mobile phones.

And tbh I think your risk analysis is way off. What's an easier target for theft by a teenager - the pocket of a blazer or a school bag left lying somewhere while its owner is having a kick around at break, or a huge clunky and very obvious box that's kept somewhere a bit more secure?

I've just dug out the letter the school sent when they confirmed the trial was being made permanent - some excerpts below.

Since the launch of the digital detox we have seen a dramatic decrease in the number of behaviour incidents relating to and/or heightened as a result of phone usage during school time. For example, fewer/no cases of students filming or messaging each other during lesson time or incidents of students being unkind via social media or distracting each other when in lessons.

^Whilst we know, it was different for us when we were growing up, young people are having to navigate through an unfamiliar, unpredictable social world, which is constantly changing. Mobile phone usage is a national concern. Our students are developing habits that allow them to understand ‘It’s going to be okay, if you do not check your phone’.

Notably, teachers have reported that they have seen a vast improvement in students' focus and attention within the classroom and this has resulted in there being a positive learning environment in the classroom.

I'm sure the school would rather just ban phones altogether to make it simpler for themselves. But they recognise that we live in a world where there are many reasons parents might want kids to have phones on the way to and from school, so this is their compromise. You can bring a phone to school, but you can't have it on you during the school day (apart from exceptions of true individual need.) If you bring a phone, this is what happens to it during the school day. Don't like it? Don't send your kid with a phone.

I know quite a few schools that are taking an similar approach now. Interestingly even the older kids I've spoken to seem to think it's a good idea.

Gosh, in the 1970s & 1980s, what did everyone blame bad pupil behaviour on then? My classrooms certainly were full of misbehaving kids. TV? Drugs? Walking to school alone? Working mothers?

I'm calling Placebo effect at JessyRad's phone-ban school.

I have a letter from my grandfather to my grandmother (who was away seeing her ailing mother), blaming Grandmother's absence for my Aunt getting in trouble with some local man. Aunt would have been about 12-13 years old. It was 1935, and the letter isn't specific but I think alcohol was involved. No social media influence need apply. Oh the wickedness of absent mothers!