Mike Baxter told us he feels “phones are literally stealing these children's education.”
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation was affecting children’s concentration in class. “You'd ask to check their phone and you'd see they’re on TikTok all night. I did an assembly with my Year 7s. I asked how many had smartphones. ‘How many of you were woken up from your sleep by a smartphone notification?’ 50% of the kids' hands went up.”
Behavioural issues
On occasions, students were being suspended for serious incidents, including fighting, due to incidents that had happened overnight (typically on Snapchat or other social media). Mike Baxter described how he was seeing“children behaving in ways that they don't behave normally. The whole anonymity of the online world was creating a really distorted reality of what's normal.”
Mike Baxter put smartphones on the agenda for secondary headteachers in the London Borough of Southwark. They created a working group to create a new policy eliminating mobile phones from the school day, which 18 out of 20 schools signed.
THE NEW POLICY:
Stage 1 (2024)
The schools decided to acknowledge the difference between simple and smart phones, with different policies and sanctions for each type of device. All phones must be switched off and put into pouches. If a smartphone is seen/heard, or out of the pouch, it is confiscated for a week. If a simple phone is confiscated, it is returned the same day.
Stage 2 (Sept 2025)
Year 7 pupils will not be allowed to bring a smartphone to school, only a simple phone. This will roll up into Year 9 over a three year period. When this policy was announced, Mike told us there was “a spontaneous round of applause.”
“It's very early to tell what the impact will be, but one thing is true; students understand WHY we are doing it. The older they get, the more supportive they are of it. They say ‘Yes, my younger sister is terrible, I was terrible with my phone back then.’ And students now really understand the connection between social isolation and spending hours on TikTok.”
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What advice would you give to other schools?
“Our role is to educate young people. You have to be cognisant of the fact that their addiction to smartphones is one of the biggest barriers to their developing into well-rounded individuals. Many of these young people spend as long on their phones per day as they do in school. So I personally see it as a massive responsibility to influence children outside of school too. The best thing schools can do is to differentiate their policies. Brick phones are okay – there was no mental health pandemic when kids had brick phones.”
Mike Baxter, Principal of City of London Academy
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Mike Baxter’s 4 tips for Heads:
- Lead on the topic. Don't wait to be led by parents – parents want you to lead.
- Take responsibility. Own the problem, and see yourself as the solution to it.
- Differentiate between smartphones and brick phones. This will help nudge parents to make different choices.
- Over-communicate. Communicate the “why”, time and time and time again. Do focus groups, webinars, drop-ins – talk about it at every open event you have. If we can turn back the clock on this, it will have a bigger impact than every child having a counsellor.
“If we can turn back the clock on this, it will have a bigger impact than every child having a counsellor.”
Mike Baxter
London Borough of Southwark
Policy
Phones to be kept in lockable pouches, with stricter sanctions for smartphones than brick phones. From September 2025, Year 7s won’t be allowed a smartphone
Date policy implemented
June 2024
Pupil demographics
Number of pupils: 1577
Age-range: 11-18
Pupils eligible for free school meals: 52.1%
English as an additional language: 20.1%
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