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

I filled in the consultation this week and there was no distinction between smart phones and brick phones.

I don’t think anyone has brought up that Scottish kids are let out for lunch and break from S1. Some use their phone to buy lunch, dd tells me the local shops refuse cash because it takes too long at lunch.

Certainly in our city the state schools allow phones a lot more than those I know about inEngland. They use them for research in class and some teachers even allow them in registration. In fact DD’s old headteacher said it would be hard to manage without them! In contrast at dd2’s private school they aren’t allowed to be seen on the school site. Dd2 is 10 and manages to walk to and from school without a phone.

School district is an American phrase! I remember that one.

My daughter's school has an out of sight policy and they've been enforcing it vigorously. She likes it. But she will always have a phone on her - she has clubs just after school until 8 or 930pm 3 nights and was followed halfway home once by a group of older teenage boys yelling antisemitic slurs at her and threatening to 'find out where her family lived so they could come back'. She walked the wrong way home in a panic and called me to come get her. So I will never, ever have my kids out there without some way of getting in touch with us (and yes, one of us is almost always home as we offset hybrid working).

You were the one who asked me a question, which I answered truthfully and directly, and then you tell me my answer is irrelevant? Are you always this rude in real life?

Is my opinion on phones in schools irrelevant also?

If you're not happy with your child's commute send them with a phone then. Your child can keep it safely out of the way. I'm sure the school knows some kids will do this. The vast majority of kids in my school district do not live rurally. They do not need a phone. The school has decided to not allow them on the property because of the disruption they cause. I support this stance and won't allow my kid to take a phone.

This policy will mean less kids in school with a phone. If our kids were in school together yours would be one of a few with it hidden away in a bag instead of almost all of them with phones hidden away in bags. This will be easier for teachers to police.

Partial success at least for the school.

My DS aged 14 has epilepsy and while we were out on a bike ride on holiday (he didn't have his phone) he got off his bike and said "I'm going for a swim in the lake" I shouted at him not to and carried on for about 200m as he usually would listen and follow us. I realised about 100m later he wasn't following and called to DD (by this time 100m ahead!) to stop.

In the time I'd stopped and gone back we think (though we aren't sure) he'd had an absence and wandered off the path. He couldn't have called us even if he had a phone. Someone called us though (normally he has a name sticker on his clothes but they actually called the bike rental shop then me).

So yes there are emergency situations where having a phone will definitely not help.

If either DC is lost by the way neither of them can reliably use Google maps but both can ask the way.

We had a pay phone in the school at the start of secondary school but this was removed by the time I left as everyone had a mobile phone. There were definitely times when transport was delayed or there were other issues after leaving so the phone at school was useless. I don’t think kids should have smartphones but I don’t think schools should be able to dictate the journey to or from school, especially when it comes to safety. I also don’t agree with uniform policies of black coats for the same reason

We had a pay phone at school in the 90s.

I often had to call my dad to say I was staying late for something.

BT used to do phone card things, anyone else remember them? You could use them to make calls, I can’t remember how it worked I think it charged the home phone it was connected to (in fact, it must have, I remember getting told off when my dad got an itemised number bill and it was all my boyfriends phone number over and over!)

As a child with undiagnosed ADHD I was forever missing the bus/losing my bus pass/losing the emergency money I had for the town bus.
I frequently had to walk either 50 minutes from the outskirts of town to my village up a 60 speed limit road with no houses and a tiny pavement, crossing over the junction for a dual carriageway or 1 hour 20 up country lanes with no street lights or pavements. There was no phone box on either route and if there had been unless it was a Wednesday my Mum was in work without the car anyway.
On a really bad day I’d have forgotten my key too so had an extra 50 mins round trip to my Mums work to get her key and a flea in my ear for being forgetful!
It was a bit miserable but otherwise it was OK.
As an adult I feel far less safe driving or being driven than I do walking on my own.

My two use a smart phone for the bus app which saves me many £££ through the year as it's a cheaper rate and has their youth discount card registered on to it.
Cash is a pain (in addition to being more expensive) as there are fewer ATMs in recent years to be able to access it easily. Also with impaired executive function one tap of a QR code is simpler when burned out after school than finding bus cards and faffing with change with a busy queue behind you and a driver whose schedule has been based around tapping on/off.

This is the way the world works in 2026, and this is the world that I'm "training" my (autistic) children to function in.
(Incidentally I was at the GP's yesterday and the number of older people struggling or needing support to use phone/ computer based systems to access services was sad, but that genie is not going back in the bottle either)

I don't routinely track my DCs, but a smart phone means that if they have a problem they can ping me a GPS location. This was useful when hypermobile DS2's knee pinged with a dislocation so I diverted home from work* to collect him. This was also useful when there was traffic carnage during a storm which delayed and diverted the busses through parts of town that DS1 doesn't know. Being able to talk to eachother and show mapping helped DS1 to avoid autustic meltdown in a difficult, unpredictable situation. There are times that the buses are delayed and he opts for the 3 mile walk instead, but his route was obstructed by fallen trees and walking was not a safe option that day.

(*a rare perk of working in schools; finishing at a time and location that enables me to support my DCs if needed)

The climate of schools and safeguarding has changed. When DS has risked lateness because of bus delays and jogging 3 miles at scout's pace looks like the better option than waiting, he's been able to phone me to let his school know about the issue. The pub across the road is of limited public use to an autistic teenager at 7:45 am. There are no payphones along the route or indeed in my neighbourhood.

I have no issue with phones being put out of use during the school day (pouches at theirs, collection at mine) but phones are an essential tool of getting out and about with public transport in 2026.

I also resent the ageist continual insinuations that all teenagers are using smart phones and social media irresponsibly and harmfully. Yes there are widespread issues and controls are needed, but a large proportion of teenagers are sensible too, and they should not be penalised or endangered by knee-jerk virtue signalling reactions. The problems youths involved in inappropriate bullying, content and grooming are not going to be miraculously solved by preventing phone use while commuting. I've raised my DCs with technology introduced at practical times, and age-appropriate controls and discussion about why those limits are there.

I would also be very intetested to see what proportion of MNers would like to do my DCs' commute by bus or foot at twighlight without a phone... or indeed at all...

@BogRollBOGOF my DD has ADHD and we do use a bus app to allow her to get the bus home from town but she does still have to remember her bus pass for the school bus (just a printed laminated thing) and has managed only 2 for a whole year.
However a debit card is an easy alternative to a phone for paying for either bus or other things. She has also lost about 2 through the year but Starling do free replacements thankfully. We'd give her cash if necessary while one was being replaced.

My secondary had a payphone too.

Millions of kids live between two or more houses, they need to be able to contact both parents.

I agree with pupils not having their phones during the school day & think they should be in their bags & switched off. I don’t agree with handing them in at the beginning of the day because what happens if a phone goes missing? Would the school take responsibility & claim on their insurance for the cost of the phone. I highly doubt this & I also doubt this would be an insurable activity.

Public phone boxes don't exist, but every adult around them will have a phone on them, so if they have an emergency they can use their big kid voice and ask politely for help.

It'll teach kids resilience, problem solving, planning and communication skills, skills that as a society we are rapidly loosing.

They'll have to pre plan their social lives and stick to it (remember when we could all meet at the same pub within a time window without multiple messages flying around and shifting plans?).

They can ask their friends to use their phone to contact home once they get to their friends house, not roam the street for hours first.

And if your little darling is incapable of adapting, put an airtag in their shoe, I'm sure they'll figure out timekeeping and following basic parental orders as an alternative to being tracked.

Won’t affect my DD as she needs her phone with her at all times (non negotiable), but it does seem quite draconian.

No it wouldn’t be ok. DDs bus was sometimes significantly delayed when she was on it, often nowhere near anywhere which would ever have had a phone box.

Why don’t you get rid of your phone and do all that then?

There may be a town v rural issue here. The logistics of what to do when the bus broke down or the road was blocked on the route DD had for secondary would be very hard for even the most capable schoolchild to deal with. It was also probably useful to the school to be able to have someone let them know when there were such issues on the way in. The school operated a phones off at school policy and afaik it worked fine.

And when it’s dark in winter and they’re walking across a field or a country lane with no adults around or phone boxes? I was frequently in areas with nobody else about

It’s not just rural or urban. Children have different journey lengths, home circumstances, responsibilities, commitments, health and medical needs for example. I cannot understand why anyone would be against another person’s child having even a brick phone when they are out. I’d rather they had one when they were out than when they were home…but they need one at home to access the school app of course!!

Do you live very rurally or something because if a teen asked an adult to use their phone around here (London) they’d assume they were trying to steal it…

What is the point in this sort of comment? I grew up in the seventies and eighties. Obviously I had no mobile phone and I survived. But I can think of dozens of occasions when my life would have been better and/or safer if I’d had one. Overall, parents being able to contact their children, and vice versa, is a good thing. Surely?

Insane that you actually think it appropriate for a child to approach an adult for their phone!

Where do you live, because this would be a ridiculously risky thing to suggest in any town or city.

Our children’s school has them handed in during form class at the start of the day where they are locked away and then returned in the last ten mins of the day. If a child is caught in between times the phone is confiscated and can only be collected in person by a parent. The third time it is come discarded it is not returned til the end of term.

My daughter and I were in Amsterdam last year and a young girl approached us in tears. I didn't entirely understand what she was saying and didn't react quickly and she wandered off. I figured it out and sent my daughter to get her back. Turned out the poor thing had gotten off the tram a stop early (her mum said 'get off at the next stop and she jumped off, her mum meant the next one 'after' this one). They were just off a flight from the states and the poor thing was beside herself. As was the mother when she finally got to us 30 minutes later (she got lost and had other kids with her and it was pouring rain - total nightmare for them all)

The point is that she was clearly young and clearly upset and I'm a mum and not a bad person or anything and it 'still' took me a minute to figure it out, figure out how to phone her mother (international phone) and figure out how to get her back to me. She did the exact right thing finding another mother to ask for help and it still would have been 100x easier if she'd had her own phone.

That prompted me to run through loads of scenarios with my daughter and remind her to look for a mother if she needed something like this.

However... on my daughter's particular walk back and forth to school she is 100x more likely to run into a group of teenagers drinking and vaping in the park than a lovely older woman to help her. She is also 100x more likely to run into the group of boys trying to hurt a Jewish girl than a phone box. We can work through scenarios and practice independence and cope with change together... all very important as we are aiming for a self sufficient life eventually. But I see no reason we shouldn't use the tools we have. A phone doesn't solve everything but it certainly fixes some. Just like her emergency £20 for a taxi or her inhaler in her pocket. Or the emergency tampon every woman has stashed somewhere. It's just a tool to fix a problem before it gets worse.

You are being difficult to make a point that doesn't exist.

I am explicitly saying that we should be able to be more resilient to disruption - not the zombie apocalypse.

Cos if we are not, we will end up with disproportionate problems every time we have an infrastructure failure. And these are more likely to happen the more dependent we are on tech. And this will be a hell of a lot worse than a missed bus.

We are making ourselves vulnerable unnecessarily.

We should be planning for this. All of this. Rather than doing hand waving and saying that someone pointing this out is some kind of prepper loon. I am most definitely not.

Trust me. Look at the news this week. We are heading into stormy times as there are multiple factors coming together again.

There was a pay phone at the end of the road my school was on and thinking about it there was one inside one of the school buildings - which was my whole point.
If public telephones existed and were situated near schools (or public transport hubs) then the need for personal mobile phones would go down.