To wonder what the ban on smartphones across 17 schools in South London will acheive.

[ThatMother2024]

The Guardian reports that 17 schools are uniting to ban smartphones. I have no idea what this is expected to acheive, what the evidence base is and whether kids will just devise some easy workaround.

Surely they are not allowed to use the phones in school anyway? Is it really so terrible that they have smartphones?

I honestly thought all secondary schools did this anyway. Dd school actually take in all phones and give them back each day. Any phone found is confiscated for a week.

Less being distracted in class when they sneakily look at them.

Less cyber bullying by taking photos during class/school hours.

The inability to film the ones they are bullying.

The inability to film teachers and post inappropriately.

The inability to google answers or use AI to do their set classwork.

I could go on.

I am more mystified that you genuinely could not think of any reasons.

Can it be 1,700 schools across the country please? Got to start the turnaround somewhere and it needs to be consistent.

Most schools have banned smartphones?

I wish all schools would do this. This is what I would hope to achieve:

1. Reduce incidents of unsolicited filming and spreading on social media

1. Get rid of the constant temptation for students to check their phones and be distracted

1. Prevent arguments around phones being confiscated from students who are witnessed getting them out.

1. Stop students spending an excessive time in the toilet because their using their phones

1. Stops allowing students to contact home as soon as they face the slightest adversity

Most of them will probably just have them switched off at the bottom of their bag to use as soon as they walk out the gate.
Which is pretty much the rule many schools have - "no see, no hear".

We have this rule but we have 1300 students and the battle to confiscate phones and follow through is impossible with the resource available to us. Then we have parents arguing it too.

I back fully any school doing this. It should be rolled out nationwide.

The fact that kids may find a “workaround” isn’t a reason not to ban them.

There is no valid reason to have a smartphone at school.

I've just finished reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. An evidence-based analysis of the devastating consequences of current smartphone usage in teens. Would recommend every parent reads it. But schools banning smartphones is surely a much needed step in the right direction.

This.

Crazy in this day and age to be a parent and not educate yourself about the harms of smart phones for young people.

I have made the decision not to get my dtwins smartphones when they start secondary school in September. I wish this was more common among their peers as I know they are going to stand out. I would absolutely support a ban on iPhones at school.

I reckon they will learn how to spell achieve.

I think it's a rubbish idea - children need to learn to manage their smartphone use

But not in school time! It should be off and that's it. The amount of trouble caused and exacerbated by phones in schools is enormous.

Only in theory. In practice kids use them all the time in schools as it’s impossible to monitor. I think a full ban during the school day is a brilliant idea.

Do they do this? Is their evidence that they do this? I don’t work in a secondary school. I have never seen stats or data on this.

Look at Smartphone Free childhood to see if there’s a parents group for your school. Almost every school near me now has a group and it means there’s a growing cohort of parents agreeing to delay smartphone use and strength in numbers.

"they are not meant to use their phones" but how in gods name are teachers supposed to check before a lesson they don't have them. And when whilst teaching also check they are not using them?

What is the issue with actually banning them.
They have no place in the classroom.. We will look back on this in years to come and say it was like smoking in class.

My DDs school banned them. If a phone was seen by a member of staff it was confiscated for the rest of the term.
The kids didn’t dare take them out of their lockers and all parents were told if they didn’t agree with this rule, they should take their dc out of the school to one which aligned with their wishes.

According to any Mumsnet discussion on phones, most secondary schools seem to have made them essential in class. Whenever anyone is hesitant to get their 10/11 year old a phone, the thread is always full of people saying they'll have to have one for secondary school.

(Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but there do seem to be two very conflicting narratives going on about phones and schools.)

I imagine it would achieve more focussed learners and therefore less spelling mistakes.

They have ear buds 😂 not only can they use them they can watch their own favourite program whilst in a boring physics lesson 😂.

They can hide it on their lap, in a book, tucked behind a lap top...

Smart phones and social media are highly addictive.
You would not expect a drug addict to just learn to manage their addiction.

Yes, 100% they do all of this even in schools with generally good standards of behaviour. Phones in schools are incredibly disruptive and not good for learning social skills.

Some French schools have banned them after teachers noticed break times had become weirdly quiet as each child just stared at their own phone rather than interacting.