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

Glad they saw sense, but the dark coats thing drives me nuts. Its up there with the blazers they can't take off.

WTF are they thinking?

Isn't that the point? A blanket ban doesn't only apply to "typical school kids". It has to be workable for every school kid.

If the proposed rule will cause serious problems for a minority of kids and practical solutions are available that don't undermine the intent behind the rule then they should be adopted.

That’s your DD. My DS would refuse to do that. He’s obsessive about following rules.

Well that’s okay then. Non issue.

The issue with shorting school holidays is everyone wants time with their kids, but lots of employers will only allow 1 out of 3 or 1 in 4 off at the same time.

So everyone will fight over the same weeks.
Holiday places will end up with a really short season and ramp prices.

Its also expensive to entertain kids when its old and wet your paying out for softplays and cinema trips.
Decent day in summer and its s picnic in the park

They’re not thinking. These rules are handed down by people who drive to work in an air-conditioned car and spend the day sitting in a comfortable office.

Thats it exactly, engage brain people.

Welcome to the wonderful world of multi-academy trusts, where a millionaire businessman gets to decide whether your daughter can wear earrings or what colour her hair should be.

@dairydebristhanks

Ok, so there is one train per hour IF things go according to plan, no shelter, no public phones at the tiny stations.
If stuff goes wrong (and it does at least once a month), it usually takes multiple hours to get the next train (rural lines are not a priority). If you would be happy for your 11 year old to be stuck for 2-5 hours at a place without phones, shelter, food, toilets in the dark - just do that. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it when they make it home at 9pm frozen and wet.
I would like to at least know where mine is, and one if the parents collects a car load full.
30 years ago we had corporal punishment as well. just because something once was ok it doesn’t mean it was a good idea.

Yup my older child is a ridged rule follower. My youngest is the one who'd fill a yonder pouch with junk. And have the actual phone in the bag or blazer pocket.

Exactly this. Seems nuts to me for a legitimate safety aid to be withheld from kids when alternative means of communication are so much more scant than they used to be.

I’ve never understood the insistence on dark coats or not being allowed to take a blazer off either.

@SadiraOfTyrI’m glad school saw sense. Sometimes an older sibling will collect a younger sibling from primary school - this sort of scenario where a sibling can’t make it is much simpler with a phone.

There were no payphones on my route home from secondary.

I'd been walking home alone for at least 4 years before I started though. (Latch key kid)

Dark coats no logo. It's only the light of the screen that make kids visible these days!

I do think there needs to be some way of children having a phone on journey to and from school. Some have quite long journeys.
I can remember on day of bus deregulation our bus didn’t turn up and we just waited at stop. We thought a bus would come eventually and didn’t set off walking.
No bus came and all the mums were worrying there’d been a serious accident.
I think I eventually walked and got home several hours later when it was going dark. My mum wasn’t helicopter mum but I know she was worried.

It was all local though. Suburbs. Not far to walk at all. No problem with buses or trains. Lots of kids about.

Any mum would be worried if their kid was hours late home.

www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/19506455.darwen-station-bomb-scare-man-made-comments-9-11-chopping-people/

The first time my dd got train to Manchester alone she was 15. It’s just over an hour one direct train. She later messaged me to say can you pick me up at a random station.

She’d been on train and a man was making threats and had a device. They stopped on train and guard told them to jump down onto tracks and run and hide in bushes. I arrived to a full police cordon and bomb squad carrying out controlled explosions.

(no one was injured and the man was attested)

I always think about it when people say what can go wrong/why would they need to contact you!

Yes definitely. If we could have called or messaged it would have stopped all that worry (obviously this predates mobiles and there wasn’t a payphone nearby)
We probably should have walked back to school and tried to see if anyone still there but we kept thinking a bus would turn up.

I’ve just looked up bus deregulation and it was month after I started secondary school so I’d only have been 11. My poor mum.

The past was the past.

Kids used to go to school without shoes.

Just because it happened doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

And there are more weirdos around than there used to be too. Its crazy that people on a misson can be putting kids into very vulnerable situations.

One of the most nurturing comments I've heard from a secondary, in not the most affluent area "We don't mind about blazers, We appreciate many children will only have one coat / jacket we'd rather it was warm and waterproof"

Yes, poor Mum would have been worried. And scary for you too no doubt. But you got through it and made your way home in the dark with your friends. Your mum could then stop worrying. You learned you could cope. You probably had a good story with your mates. You still remember it now. You have that narrative in your mind of how it all turned out fine, and that taught you something at the time.

If you'd had a phone yes your mum wouldn't have worried and you wouldn't have been scared or confused. But worry, being scared or confused doesn't actually harm us. It teaches us. Its how we are supposed to live. Next time a bus was late or didn't show you'd be better equipped to deal with the situation than you previously were.

No one I was friends with lived near me so I’d definitely have been on my own for last couple of miles.
I do have a clear memory of it 40 years later.