To think parents are not teaching any independence?

[MrBlobbysNuts]

A local parent group is in uproar because their precious secondary school children are apparently "too vulnerable" to get the bus before and after school without a phone (phones have been banned from premises entirely)

How is getting a bus for 15 minutes without a phone unsafe? Back in the day we just had ourselves and we survived. Give the kids cash and teach them to stop relying on phones to get around. The world is no more dangerous than it was 40 years ago, if anything it’s much safer!

My dcs school allows dumb phones which i think is a good compromise

Haven't RTFT yet but my DM contacted my employer recently. WITHOUT my knowledge. I had moaned to my DM about some issues at work. Didn't ever expect her to step in on my behalf. Was just having a moan about work! I was furious when I found out. I'm 30!

And they managed prior to mobile phones too.

The problem is is that we now need to use our phones for lots of things. I didn’t have a phone for 2 days and found it challenging. If the bus doesn’t show you can’t now go use a pay phone to call someone like you could in the past

But society wasn’t built around needing a phone for things then

It's not a ban on phones. It's a ban on SMART phones. Children would be allowed brick/dumb phones that they can use to call or text. Smart phones are SO damaging to children's mental and physical health. Please have a look at https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org/ if you don't believe me, plenty of research and evidence on there.

My mum wouldn’t have known if I had missed the bus as she didn’t get home from work until 6. During that time I would have got myself home and she wouldn’t have worried as she wouldn’t have even been aware. And it would have been absolutely fine. Cases where it sadly is not fine are still very rare.

My DSS’s mum recently went ballistic because we let him and his friend get the train home from the shopping centre they had been in all afternoon. It’s a ten minute train journey, we talked him through what he needed to do, and we picked him up at the station our end. He is almost 14. It was fine and passed without incident and actually he was buzzing with the independence of it when he got off the train. She told us (and worse still managed to persuade him) that we had ‘endangered his life’. So now we have a child that is scared to use public transport on his own and who we will be driving around until-presumably-he is 18, because heaven forbid he actually does anything independently. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And in my view it’s incapacitating him as he is losing out on a valuable life skill.

At my son’s school they hand their phones in in the morning to form tutor and get them back at the end of the day. No kids using phones in the day and they still get them on the way home, everyone’s happy.

And yet.. on the other end of the spectrum, Ive been getting the side eye from various parents this week ( Half term!) And red hot for allowing my 9.5 year old to knock about in my rather Naice village on his bike, with oi.. Yell if you need me and if you aren't there or there, come tell me.
Its actually been lovely, reminds me a lot of ym own childhood!

I managed prior to mobile phones too, but I got in some stupid scrapes which would have been easier to resolve if I could have called someone.

We live remotely and the school bus service nearest bus stop to us is 2 miles away over fields and down lanes. So we pick her up. Any problem at all and there is no pay phone anywhere in the village where the stop is.

I’ll support school in expecting phones off on the premises 100%. Off premises parenting is my choice and if their rule impacts my child’s safety I won’t support them.

Wow really?

A friend of mine was beaten unconscious by kids from a nearby school. My cousin was chased by much bigger boys. And this was all in a fairly nice area. We really weren't managing all that well back then.

Our local high school has lockable phone bags and phone monitors on the way in in the morning. So the children have to put their phones into a lockable bag (like padded glasses case) as they pass through the scanners going in and show the person that it’s locked and then put in their bag. Then on the way out at 3.15 the panels on the wall are turned on that can be swiped to open them.

Perfect solution as if phone is needed in the day the office can unlock/relock individually.

Then kids have phones for travel in and out as our busses do use them, (lunches are on cards).

Kids do unfortunately need phones outside school times. Cancelled clubs, a group going to homework club, shocking weather so stopping in at friends en route, missed bus. This really is the perfect solution.

Our local bus company are bringing back physical young person bus passes from September as many schools are stopping phones in this region. My local school isn’t (small town) but most the nearby city schools are which is a different district. Some tried this year but the pass situation made it impossible.

my dc managed to go to school with phones only 15 years ago, I’m sure this generation will

Remember you can still buy £20 basic phones, put on payg credit and then they have that emergency contact device if you have complex afternoon situations

There is also a wide age range on here.
I walked 2 mile to school. I passed at least one phone box. Didn't take money to school though (packed lunch).
I'm 57,I never once, ever in my childhood, used a phone box to ring my parents. Just didn't enter my head. Things happened, good and bad, but I told them when I got home.
Edited to say my 15yo has a phone now but never rings either. I do like that he could if he needed to. He didn't have one in primary school but only walked 15/20 mins.

That particular incident sounds like it was made so much worse by all the kids having phones. Filming it and egging the attacker on. While phones allow any kind of attack to be filmed for evidence, the flip side of that is that attacks also happen so that they can be filmed and shared. And having a phone wouldn't have helped her either, you can't ring your mum in the middle of being beaten up.

Our school is also a medium sized, old style catholic school (very aware and open to parents and children’s needs).

Removing phones altogether would be a problem for my kids cohort as they arrange meeting for the bus and many come back to ours after school to play in the garden or craft.

It is just not really possible to have say 900 pupils drop off and collect their phones and still have time to get on the buses. In classes I would welcome a complete ban as it means there should be no phones to get out. Many pupils that have the pouches at school now have a second phone or have started taking magnets they buy online to be able to unlock the pouches. It is the single biggest disruption to learning I am dealing with at the moment, they are all obsessed. A blanket ban, whilst I don't necessarily agree with it as a teacher is really the only way to prevent all this.

I'm amazed the phone companies aren't designing non-smart phones to meet this demand.

Eg something with locked down capabilities aimed at teens. No social media or web browser, no games, but permitted apps such as transport companies/digital wallets to allow for bus passes etc. Texting & phoning capability. Maybe a music player.

This is great.
My son is not getting a smartphone. Dumb phone only and im hoping tbh that even that gets banned.

Do you think those victims would have been any better off with a phone? I don't think bullies would have waited to start chasing or held off hurting anyone until they'd had a chance to make a phone call first. They'd just get started.

In fact, there have been a few items in the news recently about people getting beaten up in order to be robbed of their phones.

We managed back in the day. We asked the school bus driver for help or ran into a shop or used our initiative when we could.

You can teach children "respectful use" all you want. Doesn't mean they are going to practice what you taught them. Children are pretty famous for doing what they want rather than what adults tell them to do.

The world has moved on from 'our day'. My children have a 25 min walk from their school into the city centre to get the bus home- one has seizures. I prefer them to have phones, doesn't mean they're not independent.

People always say we never had mobile phones as kids and where fine but there where phone boxes everywhere