Boarding schools and banning smart phones

[Schnoofard]

Does anyone know if other boarding schools plan on following Eton’s lead, and banning smart phones? I really don’t want to give one to my child before he’s at least 16 if not 18.

Yep. They can’t keep phones (smart or otherwise) out of prisons, so you bet that they are smuggled into schools.

Of course there will be secret phones around, we aren’t stupid! The point is the fostering of a phone free environment… the children can’t sit there openly with their phones and spend hours gazing at them because they’ll be confiscated.

The schools I’ve looked at have the limited usage in the evening rules, i.e. one hour in the evening, phones locked away at night, which is great if your child already has a smart phone, not so much if your child doesn’t but all the others do. We live abroad, and I would say that only 10-15% of 11-year-olds in DS’s class have smart phones so it’s very easy to not give him one, despite the pestering. Also, kids are strictly not allowed phones in ANY schools here. I am still hoping that more schools are going to follow Eton’s lead in banning smartphones and I’m sad to hear that doesn’t yet seem to be the case. I’m all for a smartphone-free childhood, for all the well-known reasons.

We struggle with this. DS's boarding school everyone has a smart phone and for the 1hr in the evening they are allowed them they all stare at the screen. there's no social interaction in real life..

@Schnoofard There is a definite move towards phones being banned in day schools in the UK, across both state and independent sectors, and the majority of boarding schools effectively do this too - no phones allowed during the school day, which ends at 5pm. However, one of the main reasons why Eton can enforce a total ban is that they have literally no day students, whereas the vast majority of UK boarding schools have either a significant minority of day students or, in many cases, boarders are the minority. That makes it much harder to enforce the ban "after hours" because the day student parents are unlikely to also enforce it, so it creates exactly the situation you want to avoid, whereby the boarders dont have phones but their day friends all do.

The way I see it, a UK boarder is likely to be on their phone a lot less than a UK day student, but I really think the best you can hope for is ban during school day and limited during evenings and weekends. When they are at home, which many are most weekends, they are likely to have smartphones.

They do all also have laptops, and would likely be on those more in the absence of phones - school wifi content blockers block dodgy stuff and usually social media, but DS is as likely to be checking the football news as that anyway- the house fantasy football prize is much coveted :-)

@TeenLifeMum Children do NOT need smartphones to call home: there are plenty of other options (brick phones, iPads, phones in matron's office etc). And as any houseparent will tell you, even in schools where children ARE allowed smartphones, the amount of use-time they devote to calling their parents is about 0.01%.

That says a lot about the relationship boarding school dc have with their parents. My dc message me every day when I’m at work (after school) even though they’ll see me at 5.30pm.

What do they message you about?

We're talking about teenagers, not seven year olds. The fact that teenagers spend a lot of time on their smartphones gaming, doom-scrolling and snapchatting their friends and not very much time on the phone to their parents says a lot about teenagers, and absolutely nothing about boarding schools.

If anything I strongly suspect that children at those boarding schools which ban smartphones probably speak to their parents MORE often, because their time and attention is not so completely consumed by addictive social media.

Stuff about their day. I wfh 2 days a week so it’s just the days I’m not when they have clubs so I won’t always see them for any length of time. Dd1 messages silly stuff from the school bus and they all message about plans with friends.

I’m pretty confident I speak to my teens more than a parent with a dc in boarding school.

There is no need to be rude. Children are obviously able to use ‘brick’ mobiles and landlines to contact parents.

So they feel the need to fill you in on things via text that have happened in the day before they actually see you to tell you in person even if you only see them briefly? It sounds like they could do with putting their phones down a little more.

Dd1 bored on the bus, dtds home from school and like to say hi in the family group chat. It’s nice. They have strict phone use rules and no TikTok. Works for us. We’re all different, I like to be accessible to my teens.

We absolutely are all different, however not in the ways you are not so subtly insinuating. I am extremely accessible to my teens, if they have an issue, or just want to say hello, they can call me whenever they like. I want them to. More often than not they choose to work things out for themselves, which I also encourage and am proud of. What I do not want is for them to use their phones to message me ‘because they’re bored’. They have much much better things to be doing than that, and none of them involve smart phones.

My DC at Oundle where the policy is followed strictly and my dc choose not to contravene as the cost of being caught is high! Oundle isn’t a school where it’s cool to mess around and break rules. You’re looked down on by your peers if you get into trouble (also if you don’t work hard). It’s an ethos I like but won’t suit every child out there.
Girls more likely than boys to try and break the phone rules. Girls also more likely to chit chat to their mums during the day. Boys less so! But it s generalisation - ofc all children are different.
the key thing is no children can sit on their bums doom scrolling. Tbf they do this in the holidays and I don’t have the punishments in my locker to stop them 😂.
so it works brilliantly at Oundle as ALL children are in the same boat as they all board in the house.
they have designated locations and times that each year group meets at during the week. There’s a hierarchy. Third form get the lowliest locations 😁.
I dropped in on one of my dc one weekend as I was passing and found them along with about 50 of their year group all playing 25 a side football on a Sunday afternoon. Truly it was a lovely sight. Like something out of the 70’s.
on a Sunday afternoon at home they are most definitely stuck at home doom scrolling.
banning phones at school cannot eradicate all the harm they can access online but it sure as hell facilitated a more wholesome way to spend free time at school.
meeting times have to be organised in advance as there’s no quick way to message everyone. My dc didn’t bother with brick phones. Apparently there was no point without the internet. They could Skype call home at any point from third form however. Could anlso anccess Instagram on their laptops but because it was hard work they didn’t bother so much.
Also can use the house phone for free to call home whenever, if they didn’t have a brick phone.
I think restricting internet enabled phones is excellent but can’t see how it’s feasible in day schools tbh.

#Tiredteacherxxx good to know. I’m hoping more and more schools will start banning them, leading the way for day schools and state schools to do the same. It’s clear the government aren’t going to pull their finger out!

Yes this is already in my Audible library to listen to!