To think all schools should ban the use of smartphones entirely during school day?

[90sseemedsomucheasier]

I would welcome a ban on smartphones in my child’s secondary school.

At present, in my child’s school they are allowed to take them in, but the rule is that they are to be kept at in their bags and not be seen at all. I think they get a couple of behaviour points if seen, and if seen for a third time then it is confiscated.

I know that, had smartphones existed when I was in school, I would have been a master a checking it without getting caught. I would have been on social media, messaging my friends, secretly listening to music with one AirPod under my hair, looking up answers to questions I didn’t know. I’d have never got in trouble because I would have been stealth like in my use of it. But it would have distracted me, it would have called out to me all day. I’d be waiting for my next check of it and thinking about it. I would therefore not have worked as hard, or chatted to friends as much. It would have fed me a horrible narrative about what I should look like, what my life should be like, how everyone appeared better than me and I’d be full of anxiety and not feel good enough.

This is what is happening to our children today. They don’t have the strength to stay away from them - they may not be seen doing it but they are constantly on them. Even the best behaved kids.

Even if teachers do notice a child having a quick look at their phone, they’ve got so much other stuff to do with the demands of their job - are they going to challenge the child and make more work for themselves or are they going to pretend they haven’t seen it.

Children take secret photos and videos and send them to one another to ridicule and bully. Inappropriate contest is airdropped and shared via WhatsApp groups.

As a parent, I am on it with internet safety (as is dh). We use parental control tools and my year 7 child is not allowed social media,free access to the internet and we monitor their use of their phone each evening. There are screen time limits and phone switches of at 7pm and is not allowed in bedroom.

I often feel like we are going against the grain in doing this. I feel alone and like other parents don’t see the issue with handing our children a device where they can access ANYTHING and absolutely will access anything because they are naturally curious. Curiosity is normal, but the level of information, the horrors, the ideologies and the algorithms that form as a result are not. They are extremely damaging.

I know, when I look online (I know, the irony) that there are other parents that feel the same way. But it is hard in real life. When you’re child goes to secondary school and makes new friends who went to a different primary you have no idea what their parents, and their parenting choices, are like.

Whilst I know my child is safe online in my home, I don’t know when I send them out to school. They can be exposed to all sorts of horrors / porn / ideologies because other parents send their child to school with unrestricted smartphones, whether that is because they don’t understand the dangers, or simply do not care.

do any other parents agree with me that schools should be made to ban smartphones entirely? And by ban I mean asking students to hand them in - either a locker or a faraday pouch on arrival. I get that they are a part of life and needed for safety on journey to and from school (although I would argue that for many they don’t actually even need it for that!). But during school hours they simply do not need them and should not have access to them.

This has been rolled out in some schools already and the benefits are already being seen. I would welcome it in a heartbeat if my child’s school did this!!

What do you think? Would really love to hear people’s opinions -

YABU - children should be allowed access to their phones throughout the school day

YANBU - all schools should ban smartphone access on school sites entirely by asking students to leave them at home, place them in a phone locker or in a faraday pouch

I feel so strongly about this one. And I think the only way for this to work is for a blanket ban.
Parents, please, please research and don’t gamble with your children’s childhood and mental health. Only the parents can bring on a meaningful change. Why the hesitation?!

I’d put money on the majority (yes, I mean the actual majority) of kids at that school having their phones on silent in their bags. With Bluetooth and AirDrop turned off so the staff can’t find them.

If you truly believe that the kids don’t have their phones on them, then you do live in another world.

DD’s school uses Yondr pouches (which we pay for) but given that they all have to take in laptops or iPads it’s a bit pointless as they can check WhatsApp or Insta of those anyway!

It’s a tricky one. So much of modern life is on a smartphone - train and bus timetables and tidkets, maps, music, payment cards. More and more places are going paperless.

It is really up to parents, to either not get them (obviously no use for those who already have!) and to heavily monitor and restrict them - none of this “I trust my child, they’re my friend” rubbish.

Not always. My son’s epilepsy monitor needs Bluetooth access to his phone. So he has permission to have it on in school.

Presumably those parents are also giving their children insane amounts of pocket money if they can afford to run a secret phone. Which means they’re pretty much a lost cause.

FFS!! I give up! No wonder most of our schools are failing children with parents like this. I will say it very slowly….

YOUR child may only have a quick check at lunchtime….but most of the children won’t. They will be out of bags, wasting teacher’s time having to police them, confiscate them, contacting parents etc. I teach maths and EVERY lesson in every state school I supply in has phone issues. I can spend from 10% to 100% of the lesson time dealing with it. I then go and supply in the private schools and 0% of every lesson is spent dealing with it. Can you spot the difference??? Parents with this stupid attitude are only harming their own children. Your child may be sat there like a paradigm of virtue with no phone to be seen (they aren’t by the way) but the rest of the class aren’t! And so your child isn’t able to learn.

No child should be able to put their WhatsApp on a school device.
The school doesn't supply the device, so it is a grey area.
Parents purchase the ipad.
They're not allowed social media, snap chat, fb, insta etc, however WhatsApp seems to have been overlooked.
I had a chat with DD, if she continued to text on her ipad, I'd report her.
I wouldn't really report her.

Of course they do. Who said they didn't? Point is they know if their phone is ever spotted by a teacher in school they get a Saturday detention and a week's confiscation. (School do regular bag checks as well). Repeat offences are dealt with by internal exclusion. So they know what to do to avoid that.

Whereas if you have all this airy fairy 'well they can check their phones at lunchtime and carry their phones in their bags in case they miss their bus and are ten minutes late and mummy is worried' then you open the door to absolute piss taking and a load of additional work for teachers.

If you like paying your school's staff to spend 50% of their time trafficking smart phones rather than teaching them GCSEs crack on though.

It isn't as simple as that, OP.

In theory, I would agree with you, but where are the resources in schools to enforce any rules like this?

DT’s school had a no phones on school premises. If you were taught (and bags/coats were regularly checked), the phone was confiscated and a parent had to collect it from the school at the end of the week. Breaches were very rare as it was supported by parents

It doesn’t matter than the school doesn’t supply the device. Any decent school with a decent system prevents its use once it’s connected to the school internet.

Well yes but they pretty much are on in most schools and this still causes so many issues with parents complaining and students refusing to hand them over. Parents constantly texting and ringing their children during the school day.

How do you want them to be banned? Because whenever we say leave them at home parents say they need them to make sure they are safe. Schools cannot take in 1600 phones in every day and you still have students saying “I don’t have it” so we would then have to search their bags. Edited to add - they need to be banned full stop for anyone under 16. This is the only way we are going to put that genie back in the bottle. Children don’t need computers in their pockets and they do not know how to navigate the world of social media. Look at all of the studies showing how detrimental they are to mental health yet we are all casually ignoring it and thinking it’s up to schools to impose a ban.

I think they should be banned in school but children should be able to have them on the way to and from school. There aren't phone boxes around like there were when I was going to school in the 90s and I did sometimes have to call home for various reasons but it wasn't a problem, you went to the nearest phone box and called. That's not possible now and also a lot of children have bus passes and tickets etc on their smartphones so I don't think children should be banned from bringing them to school but they should have to be handed in at registration and returned at the end of the day. It is more work and would cost money to implement but I really think it would make a big difference to disruption in class and distraction due to phones so it would be worth it.

Any child who needs to have a smartphone for medical reasons such as diabetes can be exempt from the ban with a doctor's note, this might not even be necessary if the school already know that the child has diabetes.

I live in Austria and the government has just voted to ban phones in schools. This comes into effect from the 1st May. Schools can decide how they implement the policy but many schools have already been doing this for 5 or 6 years. A couple of the schools round here have Faraday cages which the phones are put in at the beginning of the day and returned at the end.
The government has said that the only exemptions are for children who have medical conditions which require the use of the phone for monitoring.

I don't think it's as expensive as you are making out to buy a pay as you go sim card and mostly use data on wifi.

@OldTiredMum1976 not being snarky here, genuinely trying to understand: How does it take so much time if it is case of: if you see a phone it is taken away immediately and for the amount of time in the behaviour policy. Don’t they soon learn?

I mean it took DD losing it until the end of day, then overnight, then for 3 days with us removing home devices as well for her to learn.

But surely if they are confiscated so often there can’t be many left to confiscate?

I am in no way saying you should have to deal with this and especially not having to be the one to contact dickhead parents btw.

I just always thought the confiscation rule was fairly middle of the road and sensible. One thing I will say is there absolutely wouldn’t be any back chat at DDs school, that would not be tolerated.

This already exists in most schools. They’re expected to be away in their bags and switched off. Do we think they’re not texting or videoing in toilets? Not recording students and teachers in lessons when no one is watching? Not taking pictures in the corridors or checking social media? Of course they are! They’re addicted to them. It isn’t that students are allowed on their phones in our secondary schools it’s the policing of them is absolutely impossible. Parents contribute massively to the issue.

But the phone itself?
Maybe I just keep DD usefully short of money 🤣.

Our secondary confiscates mobiles if they are seen. They are suppose to be off in the bottom of bags, but there have been times when a teacher has asked if they have a mobile get them out to look at the school app.

Have read on threads before that some schools collect them in and then give them back at the end of the day which i would imagine would be a nightmare I know it would in our secondary school as if they were collected in at form time at registration first thing the kids don’t come back together again until the next mornings registration as they are spread in to ability groups. They also wouldn’t be able to give out over 1500 phones at the end of the day as it would take too long for everyone to queue up and kids would miss transport home.

A brick phone also wouldn’t work for many these days either as school bus tickets are on apps etc.

Travelling home alone with out any mobile is not safe at the moment due to gangs around our area and then there is the transport problems that seem to pop up regularly so I wouldn’t be happy for my teen to not have their phone on them to contact me or for me to not be able to contact them.

I wouldn't really report her.
It doesn’t matter than the school doesn’t supply the device. Any decent school with a decent system prevents its use once it’s connected to the school internet.

Thats true.
They are very strict on mobile phone usage usually.

Most students won't attempt to use their phone slyly, it is confiscated automatically until principal has a chat with the parents.

Plenty of old phones knocking around where someone has upgraded theirs. Kids can be sneaky!

Must admit I was surprised to see kids on “Waterloo Road” using mobiles in the classroom during lessons.

I don't want to work together with a collective of adults who may have values different to mine. I am in charge of raising my child and I don't like schools and the government encroaching on that. Phones put away in bags and out of sight is fine. Having them confiscated every morning is just another one of these measures that is starting to make schools feel more like prisons.

This drives DD mad about a rule in sixth form of her school (current year 11) as she finds it pointless as pretty much everything can be done on an ipad.

unless schools get metal detectors in (some do) or a consistent checking policy banning if seen makes sense to me - not allowing on site unless you have an easy cheap way to check 1500 pupils isn’t going to be any better than allowing them if kept in the bag because all of your stealth methods hold true and you then have to cope with the feedback they need them to get home

personally for me it works having in the bag - teaching them to use them correctly works much better than simply banning

I’m torn on this because although I agree that phones can be extremely damaging for our children, I think with good discipline, phone use can be managed and the benefits of them can be used. My dc used to take pictures of the board the teachers were working on so they could look later.

If things are banned then they become more attractive and teenagers will just find a way to break the rules, especially considering so many parents don’t support a ban. A ban would also mean that children aren’t taught to use them wisely.

Smart phones should be banned full stop. What they are doing to developing brains is horrendous. Parents not looking at their children because they're too busy scrolling is having a massive impact on social development and subsequent mental health. constantly being stimulated and overloaded with so much information is too much for the human brain. We are really in trouble as human race I think.