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.

The school relies on the very technology they ban.

I'm guessing they sent you a text, and email or had some sort of app to notify you of the ban.

I'm guessing it wasn't a letter, a slip from the teacher or, heaven forbid for a school, an actual phone call (to a non mobile number...) to actually speak to a parent.

Oh and maybe refuse 'online' parent teacher meetings too- insist that the school accommodates your desire for them to meet you face to face- as you don't want mobile phones.

I really think total phone bans in schools will become the norm, particularly with all the data around the damage to the developing brain, safeguarding/bullying we have now.
I imagine it’ll be a rocky few years while best practices are figured out but I welcome the ban, personally.

DS needs his phone to zap on and off the bus. The days of 30p for the bus fare are long gone.

Around Christmas there was a storm and the bus service and route was heavily affected by fallen trees, including one stretch of road causing a lengthy diversion through a labyrnithe housing estate. It took him 90 minutes to travel the 3 miles home. While arguably walking would be far quicker in those circumstances, that was not a safe option in those conditions, and the only way he knows to avoid that closed section on foot would be off-road at very high risk of trees falling with no help nearby. He was safer staying at the bus shelter and on the bus.

There is a grand total of zero pay phones on the journey home. The pub halfway is not the kind of place where an autistic 12 year old will be able or allowed to walk up to the bar. Reciting my phone number backwards 3x can not summon me.

Smart phones allowed him to check the bus website for information, contact me to keep us both updated and reassured (because it's natural to be concerned about an otherwise missing 12 year old at twighlight in a storm even without the added complication of autism involved) and use google maps to know where he was in unknown areas.

It wasn't practical for me to go and rescue him because I'd be subject to the same traffic chaos. Plus I was waiting at the bus stop for him as the walk home isn't great at twighlight anyway, so I was able to update him on where I was waiting safely. I didn't have access to my car.

The phone was a vital tool and saved a huge amount of worry on both sides, and gave DS the information he needed to cope with a stressful situation and avoid shutdown or meltdown. It meant I already knew that bus#1 had been too full to pick up at DS's bus stop and he was still waiting rather than being concerned about him not getting off.

In contrast, DS2 doesn't need a phone for a simple 300m walk from primary school, although now on the cusp of leaving, he can use it to update me on spontaneous plans on going to play with friends.

I have no issue with phones being off or shut away in school, but they are necessary for many pupils' journeys.

The days of payphones and bus passes on cards are long over and young people learning to be independent need to learn to function in their current world not a rose-tinted 20th Century version.

And I did obviously go to school (and uni) in pre/mobile age but there were pay phones everywhere (also went on tube). It was a different era so comparisons are nonsensical.

Im wondering if most people actually know of the difference. Smart watches people think normal smart watches which connect into your phone. Not the 4G phone watches with very limited functions. If the school has a strict blanket ban though it might be hard to get them to engage about alternatives.

Go to a nearer school, how far away can it be that it takes several hours to get home?

You haven’t provided any argument to the contrary! Why am I disingenuous? Why isn’t it like we used to put babies on their front?
I know you didn’t mention seat belts- I was giving an example of things people used to think was fine that they no long do!?
Just saying ‘no it isn’t so there’ is absolutely lazy

Our secondary has a total ban on smartphones but allows brick phones (off, in bags) which I think is sensible.
London, so no phone apps needed for transport.

Here it saves money to have your bus tickets on an app. I can buy ds in bulk and get a saving. He would need his phone to get to and from school.

Yes it's the same here. The buses are cashless so you need a card or a phone, and they heavily push using the phone and it's cheaper as you can buy multiple tickets at once eg for a week.

No, they are not trying to ban the internet. They are restricting minors' unsupervised access to the internet, which is not actually the same thing?

All phones are banned - what would putting a cheap sim in an old phone do?

Exactly this. Mobiles are part and parcel of every day use so children need to be taught how to use them. Restrictions of course need to be in place and schools must have a very robust policy about phone use in school with heavy sanctions for this being broken.
I have 3 kids in 3 secondary schools and all are allowed phones in bags switched off. The sanctions if you get caught with your phone off are very harsh and mean that bar the odd loo text kids generally don’t bother much as it isn’t worth it.

How will there always be a way to contact him? If the parent can't get hold of them on their phone when on the way to/from school then how can the school?

Also don't understand the issue about finding other ways to occupy themselves at breaks? Did your school not ban phone use in school? That's what they do at DD's school - phones have to be kept in bags and turned off.

I wouldn't be happy about not being able to contact my DD.

YANBU
Phones switched off during the day and punishment if they're seen with them out I support. But they need access to phones for journey to and from school in case of problems.
I wish schools would put as much effort into reducing the spread of illnesses at school as they are into these mobile phone bans that just create other logistical problems for our kids anyway.

My sons school has 2300 kids, imagine the logistics lol

We managed without phones for donkeys years.
This just indicates how reliance on technology infantilise children.

Exactly!

My Nan lived to be 93 and hated this kind of argument. She loved how much better life was now and how much easier technology made life.

A lot of bus and train tickets are on apps now so this rule is ridiculous.
YANBU OP

Considering how prevalent safeguarding is now, i'm surprised a total ban on phones is allowed.

coukd you push the school to use those magnetic pouches festivals use? They get locked in the morning and unlocked when they leave. It’s a pain, but I can’t imagine less of a pain then metal detectors.

in the meantime could he have an Apple tag, he can’t contact you but it might help you just keep an eye

Which to be fair, I'm glad about, when one of my DGDs was assaulted in school and school didn't ring her parents.

But mostly, the kids there do follow the phone rules and keep them in their bags

Safeguarding was also sub-standard for donkeys years.

This is from an editorial in the Independent.

protecting children from harm cannot ever be the sole responsibility of regulators and the platforms. Parents and teachers are the other primary players in this continuing struggle – and, in reality, the only ones with the presence and power to limit harm. The tech companies can, and do, provide tools to help filter online activity but the decision to give a child a smartphone or tablet and to control their use of it would still lie in the hands of parents, other guardians and schools.
The time will come, if it has not already, when we realise that laws, regulators and codes can only ever do so much. Controlling harmful content at the “supply” end will always be a cat-and-mouse game, with the young user continually devising new ways to evade age verification and explore beyond “approved” content – it is generally what children do. Encryption allows them to do so undetected and encryption cannot be “uninvented”.
Only the physical denial of access through making sure that online activity is restricted to older children – and even then, as supervised as possible – can minimise juvenile exposure to harmful material and unscrupulous people. There is surely a strong case for schools to be smartphone-free zones, driving the bullying and the hate out as far as possible, and for teaching staff to enjoy the necessary spells to confiscate devices.
But even in those circumstances, and even if there was perfect control of online content, the sheer amount of time the young spend on the internet can be as bad for their physical as it is for their mental health. It is up to parents and teachers to be much bolder in constraining the virtual lives of those teenagers and younger children in their care. With the very best will in the world, they cannot expect to be able to subcontract all of that work to ministers, Ofcom and the industry.
Parenthood has never been easy – and it is going to get more difficult.

You don't have one, I take it?

😂I don't know if my DGC have ever seen a payphone!

Let's face it banning phones through the day for kids is right in terms of concentration in school but it's not going to stop social media addiction. What's the first thing most kids will do when they get home? Pick up their phone and scroll.