Banning brick phones on journeys from school

[Gridloch]

Are they seriously considering banning brick phones so children can’t be contacted before/after school? How is that sledgehammer to crack a nut rational or defensible?

https://www.scotsman.com/education/parents-allow-brick-phones-in-school-or-campus-ban-will-fail-8943319

It would be ok if BT put back all the public phoneboxes that have been removed.
When I walked to school my 25 minute walk took me past 4 phone boxes.
All are now gone.

Things like this just pit parents and schools against each other.

Yes true. But I don't recall using them as a child.
I don't get this phone ban at all. Our school ask the pupils to put phones in a drawer. No big deal.
If a pupil doesn't hand in a parent can collect the phone from the office 10-2. It's a rare thing.

One of the phone boxes was at the end of the road where my school was.
Every day people were using it after school to ring home to let their mum know they were going to their mates house or the library or over the park.
It was a well used phone box.
Sometimes there was a queue for it.

We didn't.
But they won't return.

I agree.
It's unlikely public phone boxes will return.
I personally think the "Switched off and at the bottom of your bag" rule for schools is fine.
Banning phones is over the top.

We had a bank of payphones (maybe 4) actually in school for the use of pupils, I'm pretty sure DC's school had at least 1 when DC1 started (2003) but it had gone before my youngest left in 2017

We have the smart phone ban in Kent but my dd has taken a brick phone in for her first day today, switched off in her bag and only for emergency use. I don't disagree with the smart phone ban but they are still young at 11 and some are travelling miles on public transport. They need some way of getting in touch with their parents in an emergency.

It’s completely over the top. What message does it send to a parent or a child when they’re told they can’t even have a brick phone in their bag for the journey home? It would make those schools sound stupid, lazy and unbothered about personal safety. Why not do measures that elicit support rather than bad feeling?There was a thread on here about a school that were even recommending trackers on children, rather than just having an out of sight policy.

At my sons school they just hand him jn at form and get them back at the end of the day

I really don’t see the problem but then I grew up without a phone

if the bus was late , it was late
if a bus was cancelled I got the next one
I never had the money for a phone box and anyway we didn’t even have a phone at home till I was 16

the only time mam was worried was during a dreadful snow storm - I was about 3 or 4 hrs late home. The bus driver squeezed everyone on “kids here , move up and get these kids on “ and dropped people as close to their homes as he could ( some roads were already closed ) . No one failed to get home that night / everyone helped each other.

and this only happened because of the lack of warning on the weather - it caught everyone by surprise what with one weather forecast a day rather than at your fingertips

No, it doesn't, it shows the school expects and believes the kids can get to and from school safely and problem solve along the way.
Which is entirely healthy.

Generations of children grew up safely, with considerably more freedom than DC have now. Without phones.

I used them all the time… with never any money so I remember the reverse calls very well 😂

I either got the bus to school or walked.

When I walked i either didn't pass any phone boxes. Or the phone box was out of service due to vandalism.

I lived to tell the tell along with an entire generation.

We don't need phones. This is parental anxiety not a need from the kids.

If kids have a problem they need to be able to resolve it without having a phone to hand like we did.

The thing is growing up, everyone knew their home telephone number. Now few kids do. We have a lot more people who have mobile phones so if there was a kid who was in trouble there are so many more people and places you could ask for help if you needed it. Previously you would have to find somewhere with a fixed landland if there wasn't a phone box. So the availability of emergency phone points is actually a lot higher than it was.

No one ever talks about how kids cope if their phone is nicked or lost or has no battery either. The reliance on the mobile phone means we don't think to teach kids how to handle a situation without a phone.

It makes them more vulnerable because we rely more on the technology.

Remove the phone and teach them how they would handle a situation without it, and lose the parental anxiety.

Absolutely 100% this.

We need to send the message to our kids that they can cope without a phone.

Why some people are keen to send their children the opposite message completely escapes me.

How far back do you want to go? This is like when people say “I walked to school in six miles with no shoes”. We are in a different time now - schools also don’t give parents physical copies of letters a couple of times a term and parents and teachers coped without a bombard of messages - I’d happily go back to that, but again, we are in a different time now. Also, there were pay phones everywhere - children were allowed to use these if they needed to - were there signs up saying no children should use these as generations before didn’t have phones?

Why do you actually believe your child needs a phone to get themselves to school? Do you believe they are not capable, or is it to reassure your own self?

It's not the past. It's the present.
Society was so different in so many ways.

I wouldn't be happy for my kid not to have a brick phone (which was what we did) because post-school arrangements in the family change.

They have to allow brick phones, yes.

You can only impose rules supported by a majority or enforcement becomes impossible.

what fucks me up with this oooooh phones are bad brigade is that then we have

sparks for maths
seneca for science
teams for other homework
my child at school for letters home
parentpay for school dinner money and other purchases

and so on and so forth!

kids nowadays need to learn to use tech, just PARENT and TEACH and set rules phone off during the school day, parents check the phones and read the apps and messages and know what your kids (especially the 11-13 year olds) are doing and saying.

I think it's a great policy. The less access kids have to phones the better. We all know that they are turning our kids into idiots with zero self-reliance or resilience.

Thats all tech with a specific purpose that can be used at home.

Why does anyone believe their child NEEDS a phone to get themselves to and from school?

Isn't it better for your child to learn to cope without, interact with their friends and the world?

Why should you get to tell others they don't need a brick phone? How does my child having a brick phone hurt your interests?

The brick phone enabled me and my DC to communicate if post-school arrangements changed. This gave my child more autonomy to say yes to opportunities in school and elsewhere which benefitted them.

No one ever talks about how kids cope if their phone is nicked or lost or has no battery either. This is not true.

It makes them more vulnerable because we rely more on the technology. The same can be said of every new technology.

Because she will have a 25 minute walk somewhere with no public phones and won't always have company as there is a big park between us and the school and most live on the other side.

She might not NEED the phone, but she will need to learn to use one