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

So…some schools say kids are getting them out when they are not meant to. How is a ban going to stop that? If it’s beyond a school’s ability to punish a child for using a phone when they’re not meant to, how will they summon the resilience to police a ban? If it’s not beyond their ability, then you don’t need a ban. I referred earlier to a school that is suggesting parents put a tracker on their kids because they won’t allow a dumb phone for journeys after school - does that sound rational or like a good cost benefit analysis? Do schools offering a more balanced approach have it wrong? It’s like banning food in case a child eats in a lesson. What does take up a lot of time in some schools is worrying whether a child’s socks are the right length or a hair tie is the right shade.

It’s people living in cities next to their school trying to make rules for everyone.
If you live rural, your child has to take 2 busses and a train - none of them even remotely reliable - a phone, and a smartphone at that, is an absolute necessity.
A tracker is useless without phones around

Trackers also don't solve the communication issues.

It quite reminds me of all the people who don't think we need summer holidays anymore and could just spread the holidays out throughout the year. Where I lived rurally, everyone from 14+ (tractor driving age) spent the entire summer holiday working day and night in the fields to get the harvest in. Anyone I speak to who lives in a town stares at me in disbelief when I make that point. (And actually this fits with the mobile phone thing, half the time they're disappearing off after school in either the summer or early autumn term, depending if it ends up as a late or early harvest to go and meet their dad or whatever to carry on harvesting. A mobile phone proves quite useful in those circumstances.)

But there are a lot more parents with 5.5 weeks leave each a year (with 13 weeks school holidays to figure out covering via clubs and family) across the whole UK than there are farmers kids being put out on the fields all summer, and we live in a democracy.

So, i think discussions about modernising the school year are hardly inappropriate.

Yeah, and that's fair. But it's talked about as though the disadvantages don't exist. And there seems to be no knowledge or comprehension of the fact that actually rural lives do exist. Just like people have shown on here regarding mobile phones.

There were only pay phones when I was a kid and I would not have had the money for one anyway. My parents were not on the phone till the 1970s. The next door neighbour was but that was only for emergencies. Somehow we managed without mobiles and we still grew up. You can get a "brick" small enough to fit in the palm of your hand or down your sock so how is the school to know its there if its turned off?

I live in a national park, DD is in a small village school with less than 60 pupils, not one of the kids from my DD school is working on the farm, or will be when they are older.

I get it must be hard going, but even in rural areas you are very much in the minority. All the other parents are juggling leave entitlements, leave rotas, office politics, or trying to keep their own businesses going throught the long summer.

Indeed! my son could be at any of 8 tiny little railway stations (2 different lines to get home, each with 1 train per hour) if he gets stuck, not to mention thr bus stops. No mobile phone reception at most (nor shelter for more than 5 people), but wifi. Smartphone it is!

Oh come on. Kids have had long journeys to school for centuries without phones.The mollycoddling of children now is nuts. You can get any info you need online re train delays or cancellations yourself . Kids do not need phones to travel.

Talk about cherrypicking and scaremongering! Actually a search will show you numbers of abductions by strangers have remained low and stable.

Experts warn any increase in stats is largely due to stricter police reporting standards and legal changes rather than a surge in actual crime.
The overall picture is complex and depends entirely on the type of abduction:
📈 Why Official Statistics Have Risen

• Better Reporting: Organizations like the NSPCC caution against interpreting the jump in numbers since the 1970s and 1980s as a literal increase in child snatchings. Police recording processes have become far more rigorous over the decades, meaning incidents that went undocumented in the 1980s are now strictly classified as criminal offenses.
• The Rise of Parental and International Abductions: A massive driver of modern abduction statistics is family-related disputes, often involving one parent taking a child abroad without permission. Increased global travel and international marriages since the 1980s have led to a steady rise in these cases, which are now heavily tracked under international frameworks like The Hague Convention.

📉 Stranger Abductions Remain Rare

• The Reality of "Stranger Danger": While recorded numbers look high on paper (often exceeding 1,000 recorded offenses per year in England and Wales), the vast majority are parental or family disputes.
• Stable Figures: Actual abductions perpetrated by total strangers have remained consistently low and relatively stable over the decades.

This makes no sense.
It's not about mollycoddling, it's about logistics.
Of course no one needs a phone to travel, they want a phone to communicate if necessary.
Why should anyone need to be conducting online research when phone communication is possible? This just makes the parent even more responsible,vreducing the child's agency further.

ETA: although some transport companies do require a phone for discounted tickets.

You don’t need to communicate!!!! Leave them be. The world isn’t going to end. They will catch their transport and if they don’t they'll be better at timekeeping the next time. If a bus is cancelled you can look it up yourself or they can wait for the next one like children have always done. Phones are hugely damaging( kids don’t talk to other kids whilst travelling they just sit on phones) , it’s open to abuse in school which is clearly happening, it’s open to children abusing other children online and whilst unsupervised and also children being put at increased risk themselves by being online and unsupervised.

They do not need them. Up until 20 years ago no child was travelling to school with a phone and survived. The hysteria is ridiculous.

Look it up on what?
20 years ago phone boxes, and phone cards were a thing.

I find all the ‘but 30 years ago we didn’t have whatever’ argument incredibly confusing. There are lots of things my mother and grandmother didn’t have that are blessings in my life today. The past wasn’t inherently better than today.

There are many, many times I would have been far better off in my life if I’d been able to call someone for help. Yes, phone addiction is a problem and yes Snapchat is a problem and yes they need to put them away in class. But having a phone also brings freedoms and options that I would have loved to have myself at that age.

The world was a very different place 30/40/50 years ago. Many more homes with a mother at home, tighter communities so neighbours who knew each other and looked out for each other, pay phones… etc etc. We aren’t living in that world so we need to use the advantages we have in this one.

I promise, if you’d ever had a call from your daughter running from some bigoted bullies and being afraid to run home as she didn’t want them to know where she lived you’d be so grateful she had a phone. I can’t imagine what might have happened next if I hadn’t been able to go get her. And yes, the police and the school were involved after but in that precise moment her phone was a lifeline.

Firstly I don't use the word hysteria. Secondly you are the one becoming aerated about this issue, not me.

You clearly don't understand how modern families lives are arranged. Perhaps your child goes straight to and from school every day. But that's not how every family lives.

Where families have variable arrangements that involve interconnected transport (car sharing or collection from different places) this can only happen if changes or disruptions can be communicated. If you remove the means to communicate, some children would have to say no to various activities that get arranged at short notice, including revision sessions and school clubs, in order to get to their usual collection point at their usual time.

It isn't 1986, it is 2026. The average distance travelled to school has increased, the provision of school buses decreased, the provision of public service buses decreased, the reliability of all public transport decreased, the use of cars increased, the use of car sharing between families increased, the number of families with both parents working increased, the number of families with kids at schools with non-aligned start/end times increased, the range and location of after school activities different, the education leaving age increased, plus a myriad other subtle societal changes.

Even more reason why phones are not needed. Responsible adults are ferrying kids. Leave a message with them. They do not need phones. You’re trying to make issues when there are none.

@Gibgertea if (according to you) kids no longer talk to each other when travelling too and from school because they are all on their phones.....why is every bus/train I travel on during the school run hours the most noisy public transport can ever be?
Have you ever been on a bus the same time as 40 secondary school kids?
It's probably quieter at a football match with 40 000 fans 😂😂😂😂
Sometimes I wish they would all sit quietly on their phones 😂

I don’t get how some people refuse to move on. Always looking back instead of forward.

The fact is, that before mobile phones (I was 19 before I had one, and even then, not eveyone else did), everything was a bit inconvenient and shit.

But yeah, let’s go back to the times of arranging to be picked up at 4, the train being delayed for a hour and no bugger knowing what was going on or where anyone was. So much more wholesome!

Phones don’t bring freedoms they bring dependency, addiction, bullying, abuse….the list is endless.

Mothers weren’t looking out for other kids, many were working or busy so let’s not try to create a false rosy tinted picture. And as for freedoms, children had 100 times more independence pre phones. The message today is you can’t do anything because you’re not capable unless you have mummy in a state at the end of your phone permanently attached to you.

And we wonder why MH and anxiety levels are so high.

Bullying has been going on for centuries. I’ve had to manage it as have my children- without phones. It is possible.

I guess I would rather take some slight inconveniences then spoil my child’s development but there you go

Leave a message - what are you talking about? The child who won't be where expected can't tell anyone what the message should contain if they have no phone. The phone is how the message gets left.

You are speaking as if you've travelled from the past and have no idea how phones, cars, buses or schools operate in the 21st century.

My DDs school has banned phones from this term (don’t go back til next week) and have sent an email with an application for exemptions (medical grounds etc). DD doesn’t qualify for an exemption. However….

It’s a rural school, she has a 50 minute bus journey. The school used to manage the bus contract and so would know who did and didn’t have a bus pass. Last year they allowed the bus company to take over the admin/payments, and the bus company will only accept their app as a ticket. No print off, no physical copy. Many of the students are in the same boat. It’s not a workable policy and they have not offered a solution just reiterated no phones.

That’s how buses always have been- pre phones. It’s only a problem if you make it one.

Exactly this!