Mobile phone ban in school- not sure what is reasonable!

[greenmarsupial]

My children’s secondary school have just sent out an email about the new DfE guidance on mobile phones in school. Currently, they are allowed to bring them but they must be off and in their bags during the school day.

The school are consulting parents on options but with a heavy steer. It sounds like any lockable option is time -consuming and expensive so they would probably like to just say no phones whatsoever.

I do fully support the school and would reinforce rules around phones but for some reason this has made me quite cross as I feel it oversteps. My kids often go to the local leisure centre after school- they need the app to book and get in. They need Apple Pay to buy anything… I appreciate we could probably ask if the leisure centre does physical cards and they could carry a bank card so there are get arounds but why do we need to when that’s not the direction of travel for most things?

I am far from in constant contact with my kids but I do find it helpful to check their location and for them to be able to let me know if they need collecting - the plan is normally to walk but if friends don’t go or a club us cancelled then we need to communicate. I’m all for them having restrictions but I think that’s my place as a parent.

I’m happy to be told I’m wrong about all this- my gut reaction was just to be annoyed. I know we didn’t have tracking and text in the 90s but I was definitely a teen who was rarely where I told my parents I was so maybe it’s paranoia although this generation seem almost too sensible 😂

My DS’ school is going through the same process. The problem for many of us is we are quite rural with pupils travelling (on school buses) for up to an hour. It’s a great chance for them to get online homework done and also allows parents to check where they are en route. Whilst I fully support no phones in school this does cause issues.

@AitkenDrum1970 that’s why many schools are going down the pouch route.

I assume most schools who do go down that route will then up the consequences for having a phone not in a pouch on school site, so any pupils flouting the rules will probably face a suspension rather than a detention

In one area the proceeds of crime were used. They cannot be used for police resources must be charitable. At first I thought it would be better a charity directly related to victims but young people are also victims of crime. Behaviour improves in schools so I think it was a good use.

Yes, I think that's great!

What about children that need their phone for the app to pay their bus fare? Not every child gets free transport to school.

Mine used to have a bus card that I could load up for them and they just tapped on and off the bus. Then the card was stopped and only the app could be used. This was a few years ago so I assume most bus companies do this now.

My school's just had Ofsted (favourable) and they specifically said they were happy with our phones in pouches policy. Storing a thousand or more phones off the person daily is never going to work!

@Frenzi that’s why the pouches are great. They get locked in when they get off the bus at school and unlocked before they get on the bus after school

I think its strange that society is daying children need a phone for simple tasks such as catching a bus, rather than saying companies should ensure children can access services without an expensive piece of equipment that has been shown to be harmful to their well being.

(Bus passes are cards here (South Yorkshire). They have the childs photo on)

Our local bus company is bringing back physical bus passes from September due to the phone ban, local leisure centre here has physical memberships if required too. Demand alternatives of these sorts of orgs

It needs joined up implementation - so if phone use is being stopped in schools for welfare reasons then youth use of leisure needs not to be phone reliant. Same for bus passes. Same for being able to contact parents (pay phones work well), same for parents being able to contact pupils (office taking messages).

I think the issue with phones in bags is that a significant minority go off to the toilet to access their phones.
I have to go into quite a few secondary schools for meetings, and some of the children are wild, including the ones I support away from the school setting . They disrespect authority and can be quite abusive and disobey the no phones and no vaping rule without a thought.

As unfair as it is on the other children, the only successful way to deal with this is phones in pouches and checks for secondary phones ( which is a common tactic to try and beat the system)

I honestly don't know where there's a working payphone. In our local (very small) town, there was a single phone box until it's removal about a year ago.

The one in my sister's rural town has been turned in to a defibrillator and the one near PIL is a mini library.

Fortunately my DCs' school is going down the pouches route as the bus fare is cheaper by app with their youth discount programmed in. 2x children, 2x bus journeys a day, that stacks up across the year as a significant financial saving compared to pay per journey by cash/ bank card. Plus bank card + youth card is more organisation for tired ND teenagers to handle after a busy day at school frazzling their brains. I've had times when buses have been significantly delays and diverted due to fallen trees in a storm and a smart phone with features like google maps, sharing screen shots, and bus tracking apps were valuable in helping an autistic teenager avoid meltdown alone in public in an unknown situation in unknown places.

Smart phones are essential tools for getting out and about in 2026. The payphones are long gone, as are paper bus timetables, and the tracking displays (on the bus stops that have them) are frequently inaccurate. The bus stop is away from the DCs' school so after an extra-curricular, the school staff will be past opening hours by the time the DCs go to the bus stop and back to report any issues. In the winter it's dark, and I often co-ordinate with them to walk back past a poorly lit section of off-road path- even using the torch function to improve visibility.

My school is going down the route of handing phones in. We are anticipating issues with burner phones. The budget for pouches was too much and we anticipated too many parents being unable or unwilling to support with costs of replacement.

I'm more than well aware of the issues that can be involved with teenagers and mobile phones. I consficate some at work most days and am frequently on call searching out truants messing around in toilets (often on phones). However the assumption that all teenagers behave this way is pretty insulting. Most do follow rules and behave sensibly, and it's a significant minority causing issues.

Controling phone use in schools is fine by me, but for many smart phones are essential tools for getting out and about independently, and where schools ban them for travelling to/ from site, that is overstepping their role.

Phones should never have been allowed in school. I survived school without one and so did my kids. Ban them outright.

Assume you live in a large town or city where the kids can all walk to school, or wait 20 minutes for another bus. It is all so very dependent on the profile of your school.

Ok but then we need to bring back phone boxes.

we didn’t have mobile phones, I got my first at uni. But we did have a way to phone home to say the bus hadn’t arrived. There were these things call payphones, they don’t exist anymore.

We also had paper bus and train tickets. Not an app being the cheapest way for a parent to pay for your transport to school.

The reason the OP wants her dc to have access to a smart phone is he needs to scan a QR code to get into the gym to do his after school club. Again, not a thing in the 90s.

We (adults) have built a world that requires smart phones to access. It’s made our lives easier, but made having a phone compulsory for access to a lot of society. We can’t expect children to completely give up smart phones until adults do.

I wholeheartedly disagree. There is 1000’s of things we’ve become accustomed to over the last 20 years that we don’t really need or survived without them in the past.
They should have pouches.
My DD has a big journey every day from school. The phone saved her life in the past when bullies wanted to get her after school. These days there is daily incidents on public transport with random men. She goes to school with her phone and can of deep heat spray, these things are to be used in an emergency. I meet her off the bus as we’ve a
a huge international protection centre near our home and 1000’s of tents full of single men. Life is not the sane as it was 25 years ago. Society is fucked. I went everywhere without random men wanking on the street as I passed.

My DS is starting year 7 in Sept. Current rule is phone off and in their bag. I agree phones shouldn't be used in school time but I think the difference between now and when I was at high school in the 90's is that there was a pay phone in our school we could use to call parents and phone boxes on the way home, also we didnt need our phones for bus passes and to pay for things, they are necessary outside of school.

I have no problem at all with phones being confiscated if a child is using one in school without permission. The pouches are silly imo - a few high schools here trialled them and mostly the kids just hand in a burner phone and keep their real phone on them. They’re hideously expensive as well.

This is a very specific situation but my daughter has a serious bullying situation for a few months (we are Jewish and the police eventually had to get involved) and when she was hiding one day she called me. It makes me really scared to think of what she’d have done otherwise. The school is physically massive and spread across 3 buildings with a community campus so loads of people on campus and almost no supervision. Very happy for the entire situation to be restructured to have adults actually in charge of the children but in the current setup it’s just not what’s happening.

That’s very scary, sadly the phone is a lifeline.
My daughter’s school is strict about the phone. It is confiscated for 3 days, it discourages them from using the phone during school hours, but like you, I think they really need to have access to a phone outside of the school gate.

As a former teacher I can't understand why mobiles were ever allowed in the classroom at all.

Can't you?
Initially you couldn't do much with a phone, so they were mainly useful for being in contact after school, so no issue to have them.
Then taking photos of work on the board, very useful.

It is the apps, the explosion of social media, the over use at home and addiction that have caused the issues.

My son will be starting secondary this September. His school will be implementing the pouches. We have to pay for these ourselves. I do not know the cost to the school however and whether the way in which they are locked/unlocked is covered by the fee parents pay for the pouch or if the school is covering that aspect.
The school is one that people travel to from across the area using trains and buses so I don't think they could ban phones completely (if trains get cancelled then parents would want to know/might need to help make alternative arrangements getting home).
I think this is what most local schools are doing. I don't think in this day and age we can completely say no phones at all.

As a former teacher there was a time when phones were actively encouraged in the classroom and we were using sites that could do quizzes to check knowledge and understanding. It was also a useful resource for research lessons (and meant you didn't need to book a computer room).

This over reliance on our smart phones is why we are going to have a generation of unadaptable, short attention spanned, socially inept, mannerless, non book reading children.

The parents supporting open access to phones really aren't doing them any good. Although of course we're being sold the big con too - we want to know our kids are safe with life360, we want to be able to contact them, we want to be able to transfer them cash instantly if they need it. We need them to need their phones.

I don't know what the answer is but overall I agree with no phones in school.

(And yes my older two have smart phones but both leave them at home for school despite being allowed to take them. DC1 school has a phone off rule and DC2 has a pouch they have to use but both don't take phones)