Strict no phones rule at secondary school

[mrstidytraxxxx]

DS is starting Y7 in September. The school has a strict no mobile phone rule on site. If a student takes a mobile onto school grounds and it is found, it is confiscated for a minimum of 48-hours.

We live approximately a 30-minute walk from secondary school. There are buses, but these are apparently unreliable.

Either myself or DH will take DS to school at present (primary school is less than 10-minute walk away) and he walks home by himself, with one of us meeting him at home.

When DS plays out with friends, he has his mobile with him and knows we use Google Family Link to check he is where he says he is and he is happy with this arrangement. Obviously, we will not be able to continue like this for school journeys from September.

I would like to get a GPS tracker, either key-ring or watch, to make sure where he is on the way home.

Can anyone recommend an Android-compatible GPS key-ring or watch, that does not alert if it moves too far away from the mobile it is connected to, preferably subscription free?

Thanks in advance.

And where are you?

There are pros and cons to this policy but from a practical perspective, make sure your mobile and home number is jotted down in your child’s scheduler so that if something happens on the way home, they can ask to borrow someone’s phone to call you.

From a practical perspective make sure your child memorises their home and parents' phone numbers (preferably at an age earlier than starting secondary school so they can tell an adult if they get lost) so they are not reliant on having to look them up.

Also, they need to learn their address. I was amazed how many of DD's new secondary school friends didn't know theirs.

I'm not telling you where I live 😂 but I can assure you, she doesn't pass a shop en route.

I can think of plenty of 30 minute walks to places I want to go to that don't involve going past a shop. My 20 minute walk to work is 90% through a park, for example.

But, if I lived in a particularly dodgy area, I probably would be picking my route with ability to get to places where I'd be safe or where there was lots of people about, with a bit more care. (I don't walk home from work via the park route in the dark, for example).

Mine also has a 30 minute walk, he crosses a shopping street but besides that, no shops.
I had not realised this was unusual.

That's how our school operate but another local school has as OP described a no no rule as in you are not to take a phone in to school full stop

I’m curious what you ended up doing? My DD is going to a phone free school next year and has a similar commute. Apparently they do bag checks so chucking it off in the bottom of the bag doesn’t seem to be an option. Also no smart watches or brick phones allowed either.

When we were young, there was a phonebox on every corner and, even if we didn't have a 5p piece in our pockets, we all knew how to reverse the charges.

My son's school is introducing Yondr pouches for phones. There has been a lot of lobbying for them by parents of younger children. I do wonder to what extent the lobbying is sponsored by Yondr and their equivalents. If I was in charge they would only be used for children who didn't follow the out-of-sight policy, but they will be used for everyone.

Could you explain your situation to the school and ask if he could drop it at reception on arrival and pick it up when he leaves?

Hollow out a old dictionary and stick a hefty rubber band round it 😈

As he's been there for almost a year now, I suspect they may have either found a way around it or he's walking the mile and a half home with his mates quite happily by now. Even if that means he gets quizzed on why he's taken a slightly different route, not left the school site for ten minutes or is a whole quarter of an hour later and she's already phoned Reception twice to find out whether he's left.

My reply was in response to @PiFilling post today.

I doubt it, as plenty of others are presumably in similar situations. They’ve said they don’t want the responsibility of holding children’s phones.

I put a Samsung tracker in my sons bag and it works quite well in London. He doesn't have a smart phone so it bounces off passes by.

My son goes to a strict school but they don't ban phones, they're just not allowed access whilst on school property. I don't understand these schools that have a total ban. It's not that hard to say "if we catch you using your phone it gets confiscated until end of term".

At my kids school they have to keep them in house during the school day, but they're allowed them outside of school hours.

I think that's the way to do it - the phones are there for an emergency, but not distracting in class.

I don't like total bans because they lack nuance, they're thought terminating. Rules should be reasonable and arguable, and flexible where appropriate (eg a child cycling home in winter should have a phone).

One of the reasons I appreciate the management of my kids schools is they don't do flat bans on things normally, exceptions can be made to pretty much all their policies for some children in some circumstances. ie. They know their kids, safeguard their kids, and have high expectations. When the kids break the rules, they are appropriately punished. I think it produces better citizens.