Tender for mobile phone pouches issues

[LookItsMeAgain]

They've gone and set the wheels in motion for these mobile phone pouches that were announced as part of the last budget.

€9m for these yolks.

https://www.thejournal.ie/department-of-education-seeks-tenders-for-e9-million-phone-pouches-in-secondary-schools-6598912-Jan2025/

Can you imagine how many schools still using pre-fabs that the €9m could help?
Or how many SNA's that could provide?

If you had €9m for the Department of Education, and you didn't have to buy mobile phone pouches, what would you spend the money on?

Social media is damaging our children's brains. I don't know why you have an issue with this

Can you seriously not see how spending €9m on these silly pouches is ridiculous? DD’s school took the sensible approach and just collected phones in at the start of lessons - absolutely no need to spend such a massive amount of money on this.

You do know the pouches are only for school time. It won’t actually stop them accessing social media the rest of the time.
People have an issue with it because it’s a complete waste of resources. If kids are on their phones during class time then you have bigger issues going on.

A few questions for you if you think this is a positive step.

1. Who is being paid to hand out these pouches at the start of the day?
2. Who is being paid to recover them at the end of the day? Has that been included in the €9m tendering process?
3. What happens if the pupils in these schools need to use their phones during the day (emergency purposes/to access approved websites during class for information/study purposes?)
4. Do you really believe that this is a good use of €9m?

On an open day, I saw a school had mobile phone perspex boxes on the door of each locker. It seemed like a good idea. Lock it away at the start of the day.
What's the benefit of these pouches over something like that? Or is it stupid, because it seems stupid.

There are so many things wrong with this mobile phone pouches business.

Why these expensive pouches? Why can't children just switch their phones off completely when they arrive in school and leave them off till the school day is over?

But why would a child need a phone at school anyway? A child having an emergency while actually in school doesn't need to use a phone, the school will do the necessary contacting of emergency services, parents, guardians etc.

Far from being necessary for school work during classes, many schools have a complete ban on phones during the school day.

Not only are children getting phones, they are getting very expensive smartphones, although a cheap 'Nokia' would fulfil any emergency contact situations they might have. If one of these expensive smartphones were to go missing while handed in at school, there'd be hell to pay, so there's probably a perceived need to keep them super-secure.

There is a solution which doesn't place on schools the burden of storing expensive smartphones, and frees up that E9m for better purposes:
don't give smartphones to under 16s. The actual average age is NINE years old.

My daughters school has a ban on mobiles, but teachers have to regularly ask students to use their phones or hot-spot their ipads off their phone because the Wi-Fi is crap