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.

That's nuts. I see no reason why kids should not have a boring brick phone shoved in the bottom of their bags.

I would petition the school to allow very basic/cheap dumb phones - the sort which only allow texts & calls.

It will be the distraction of smart phone capabilities they want to eliminate and its a great idea.

omg this is hilarious. All 3 of my teenage kids get the bus so school and I can assure you that bus drivers literally give no shits and certainly wouldn’t let a child use their phone. Do you have any children getting the bus to school currently?

People giving no shits and not letting children use their phone in an emergency is another problem with the world that we are creating

I am an adult and I can't remember anyone's phone number other than my own!

Surely though having to go and wait to collect a phone and have it unlocked would have to eat into lesson time as can you imagine how long this would take for over 1200 pupils if done once the day had ended. School bus and public transport timetables can't be changed to allow 30 minutes plus for someone to collect a phone.

Literally the only people who will be saying kids don’t need phones to get to and from long journeys to school are those that don’t currently have kids going on long journeys to school. Absolutely no way any of my kids would be making their 1 hour journeys with no way to contact me if there was a problem. They had just turned 11 when they started.

Where's the money coming from?

I think it's a ridiculous suggestion to take phones of kids. Phones are part of the modern world.

I bet they'll be kids using them to monitor sugar levels and using reminders for drugs doses, even kids on the odd course of antibiotics.

Phone boxes just aren't a thing anymore. You'll be lucky to find one in the center of a town. The days of them being in every village or housing scheme are long gone.

Or the staff to carry out the process?

School budgets are stripped back to ridiculous levels. Large schools don’t have the staffing or time to manage phone collections and handing them back in
This is the issue. Plus you get the ones who hide them (OP I’m looking at you) so a total ban seems easier to police from the school perspective.
Our secondary has a confiscation policy so they are allowed in school bags. They will shortly go the same way as the OP’s school because kids use them in the toilets and won’t come out, they call home and make stuff up, parents then call school, we get the kids who use them to bully, the kids who record teachers without their knowledge, fights being videoed and put on social media. I mean I could go on.

A total ban is the way forward.

But that’s how it is unfortunately. The bus driver will not care at all if there is an issue. I have first hand proof. My sons friend was being too loud on the bus a couple of years ago and to teach him a lesson the bus driver deliberately didn’t stop at his stop and drove straight on to the next village. This boy had ASD and complexity freaked out. The next village was far too far to walk home. Bus shut doors and drove off. Thank god this boy had his phone to call his mum to pick him up. Complaint was made but nothing much done.
I’m telling you, it’s a brutal world and people just don’t care. I wouldn’t absolutely hate to think of any of my children stranded and alone with no way of contacting home.

Those who didn't quite catch the tone of my post saying schools need to invest in lock boxes and sign phones in and out. To make it more clear the above is what needs to be done but no shit Sherlock course there's no money or staff to do it I was just stating the obvious solution 🤦🏻‍♀️ 🤣

Some PPs said their kids schools use them, they'd probably have a better idea how it actually works I'd suggest asking them. It certainly wouldn't be reception or one or two people dealing with 1200 of them. First teacher of the day locks, last unlocks seems a sensible way of doing things. So 30 phones not 1200.

🙄

Oh I dunno, maybe in some crazy world, where children in school are generally not left unsupervised, maybe if there was a issue an adult could phone the parents on the child's behalf.

Or a bus driver, or a police officer, or a paramedic, or any adult, anywhere.

You know, like people used to do.

Indeed.

I'm a governor at a primary school and this term the head has yet again spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with phone and social media-related trouble.

To those mentioning the old pre-mobile days and that there were phone boxes if kids had emergencies - they weren't much use to those of us whose parents didn't have landlines put in. Mine didn't get one until I was 21 and had already left home.

Hasn't been a problem at all with DS school at all, and it's a huge secondary. They carry the pouches themselves in their bags all day and each classroom has an unlocking magnet. Takes seconds for each kid to tap unlock their pouch on the way out of the last class of the day.
No idea how much it cost the school, but it's been extremely effective.

I really don't think that's acceptable in this day and age. Kids travel alone quite a distance for school. They have transport cards on their phones, there are medical apps for kids with diabetes.

Disconnecting kids from their parents on their journeys to and from school is really not acceptable.

What if a kid is walking home and starts getting harassed by a man, they have no way of calling the police.

There was a kid stabbed in the news the other day while leaving school, imagine a bunch of kids seeing that and having no way of calling for help.

Irresponsible and unsafe. What was wrong with you lost your phone if it disturbed the class?

They're not all in the same class all day. I imagine the kids have to go to their form rooms in those schools which do this.

Each classroom has an unlocking device.

Locked magnetic pouches are defo the way forward. An investment but means an enforceable secure solution.

Trouble is, some kids will ALWAYS break the rules - very likely even with parents’ sanction - so they end up with a total ban.

If kids really do need to be contactable, I don’t see why cheap non-smart phones can’t be allowed.

Genuine question - how does this work? Tell me more?

Allowing so called 'dumb phones' would be an easy fix. Just ban smart phones.

I would recommend reading 'the anxious generation' by Jonathan Haidt if you need convincing why smartphones in schools are a bad idea.

Each child is issued with a yondr pouch which they carry with them (including home). The phones are locked into the pouches during tutor time and the child keeps the pouch in their bag. Last class of the day, they use the magnet device to unlock their pouch and remove the phone. Each classroom has an unlocking device. It's a simple tap, not complicated or lengthy.