From a Phoney-Ban to an Effective Phone ban
In the past few years, messages like the one above had been increasing at a fairly significant rate. As Principal I generally don’t meet with parents without a pre-booked appointment; but safeguarding issues will always trump this rule and I have found that most concerns can best be dealt with in person by listening and addressing the concerns at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately as a school, we were finding an escalation to heightened emotions such as as the example above, with no prior warning, notice or knowledge of the issue at hand. Pupils calling parents, parents arriving at school and staff with no idea what they were upset/angry or concerned about.
This has now changed dramatically.
From videos circulating on social media of teachers and pupils to new Tik-Tok crazes (which for some reason would always involve a lot of children and toilet blocks) the impact of smartphones inside schools has been catastrophic, in every way. Learning, safety, behaviour, pupils' mental health and a sense of community and belonging have all been negatively affected by smartphones in our Academy, and in many schools like ours.
The moment I knew we needed to make a change was during a conversation with a colleague of mine, who is a champion of our school and our community. She was at an event with friends and family and was approached, ‘Have you seen that video circulating of pupils fighting from your school, it looks brutal.’ I could see the impact this interaction had had on her. As Principal, I felt like I was letting my community down, and I knew we needed to change things.
We already had a phone ban in place in which phones were not allowed to be seen/heard at any time on the school site (as it is in many, many schools). I had written to parents and spoken to students on numerous occasions saying, ‘If we see your phones out we will confiscate them.’ and for the most part we did, with much commotion and upset. As a school community, staff tried hard to uphold the rules. At times I felt like morning briefings and staff development sessions were becoming a message on auto-repeat, ‘We must all implement this policy with consistency for it to be effective.’
Teachers and leaders wanted to make this work. But, despite our best efforts, it just wasn’t working. Like a digital game of whack-a-mole, these devices were popping up everywhere; teachers reporting children having phones out in corridors; social media posts showing that some pupils were filming in lessons; on the rare occasion that a fight broke out, it would feel like a media circus with phones and cameras everywhere - and within time all over the internet. Parents were turning up at the school reception stating that they’d received a phone call/message from their child and now wanted to speak to a member of SLT. It was draining and felt relentless.
The key issues we faced related to:
- Keeping children/staff safe; if they could access their phones then we could not be sure what content they were viewing whilst on site;
- Behaviour (around school). New fads and trends online, where leading to pretty poor behaviour; vandalising school toilets was a big trend on tik tok - smash up a public toilet and post it - great fun!
- Distraction from learning; teachers reported phones going off in lessons, constant vibrating, beeping throughout lessons distracting every pupil in the class, not just those with phones.
- Social Media posts damaging school reputation and causing distress and harm to those involved
So, we did something about it.
Instead of looking at ‘what is not working’ we looked at ‘why is this not working?’
In most cases (behaviour, safeguarding, distraction etc…) we kept coming back to a common cause; smartphones. Having made the decision to move to a more achievable and impactful ban on phones, I raised the matter at a Governing Body meeting asking for a discussion on an ‘all-out phone ban’ from the school site. This was met with a luke-warm/cold response. Governors raised concerns relating to the pupil’s journey to and from school, and this was something we just couldn’t overcome with a complete flat out ban. “What about children who need to take public transport and use their phone to pay?”
“What about notifications of transport delays and/or the need to contact parents when returning home?”
If I am honest I was a little taken back. The Governing Body have always been so supportive and this was an issue we needed to address, so their reaction made me reflect about the approach. We needed to be proactive. So we decided to try Yondr pouches (lockable pouches where children keep their phone for the duration of the school day).
The concept is simple; all children were to be given their own pouch. As they arrived at school, they would put their phone in the pouch, they would lock the pouch, it remained locked until the end of the day. As they leave the school site, they unlock the pouch.
It’s a simple concept that doesn’t involve taking the phone off the child. It can be self managed by the pupils and doesn’t require a significant amount of time to collect in phones and return them at the end of the day. Yondr were extremely helpful during the planning stage; they put us in contact with schools who had recently implemented the pouches in their schools, they talked us through creating ‘locking/unlocking stations around the school perimeter and even came to our site to plan out how many we would need and the best positions for these stations.
We discussed the options and decided this was a sensible option so we would proceed.
The cost for the pouches and locking stations would be around £35,000. This was a significant investment, but we planned for this to be a one-off cost - every pupil would receive a pouch to launch it, after that the cost would become part of the school unform.
The logistics were fairly straight forward. We needed to implement a ‘check’ as students entered the school building each morning. This was achieved by a ‘morning welcome’ led by Year Leaders, SLT members and the Pastoral support team. We decided this was a great opportunity to check in on pupils at the start of each day. A general wellbeing check in, a smiley welcome as well as compliance checks on uniform, equipment and ‘the Yondr pouch’ check. Children present their locked pouch at the door to their team, with the phone inside. If pupi’s (and many now have) have chosen not to bring a phone to school any more then they must display an empty pouch that is locked.
If pupils do not have a pouch they hand their phone to their year leader, it is locked away for them to collect at the end of the day. If they don’t have their pouch they get a warning, and three warnings lead to a detention. If pupils do not volunteer a phone, but their phone is seen during the school day, it is taken from the pupil and their parents will need to collect it from the school office.
During the school day, we conduct a series of phone pouch checks to make sure that they are still locked and phones are inside. If we suspect a pupil has a phone but is presenting an empty pouch then we may conduct a bag search. Pupils know this.
We informed pupils and parents of our plan. The response from pupils was as expected; slight disbelief and some low level bravado ‘I won’t be putting my phone in a pouch.’ The letter to the parents received very little response but our usual small minority of facebook warriors got to work on ridiculing the idea; stating it was against human rights and uploading ways in which you could break the pouches from YouTube clips available online. There were threats of, ‘I’m taking this to Ofsted, and the press!!’ So we contacted the local paper ourselves, and they reported on our plan. The story garnered a lot of local support. Being proactive with the story helped quieten some objections that were being circulated on Facebook.
We then held an information evening for parents, to explain the policy formally and announce the launch date. Now, we needed to make sure the implementation was tight and consistent.
We became obsessed with making this work. The local media attention had raised the profile of what we were aiming for, with a lot of local support, so we felt it had to be successful. We knew the first day was crucial. We planned for SLT to deliver and hand out the pouches; leaving it to form tutors was passing on responsibility. Most would do it well, but we knew some might struggle. We also wanted to give the message to pupils that this this was important. We had a senior leader positioned in the hall to speak to any day 1 refusers. The hall was to be laid out like an assembly, pupils would be held there until all the pouches were given out to other pupils, then I would go and speak to them as Principal with their year leaders, pastoral teams and Head of School. We reminded parents of the changes in early January - took a deep breath, and went for it.
Launch day:
By 9.30am, we had 98% of all phones in pouches with an incredible compliance rate from pupils. As the pouches were handed out, SLT gave simple instructions which left no room for discussion, “Good morning! This is yours, please don’t lose it - you probably want to put your name on it. Great. Your phone goes in like this… Do you have any ear pods or a smart watch? and this is how they lock. You are all set!”
As I returned to the hall, I had heard brief accounts from leaders about how compliant their classes had been. In the hall there were 5 children (3 from the same family - their dad had briefed them) out of 1250. It went a lot better than we had expected - or planned. Later that morning in teams of 2 or 3 we went around the classrooms and conducted our first checks. ‘Can you get your pouches out and on the table in front of you, please.’ This was to become something pupils would hear a lot throughout the rest of term. But the importance of these checks can’t be under-rated. The pupils knew we were monitoring.
Day 1 was a success. The key now was consistency and relentless rigour.
Since we launched, we have eradicated over 90% of the incidents described at the beginning of this article. The change was significant and evident almost immediately.
Detentions and sanctions have decreased by over 40%. The whole school culture has changed. One Governor, who has served the school for over 15 years commented on ‘the most productive and engaged he has seen children’ after walking round the school.
Staff commented on it all the time, ‘this is a different school!’ It is having a huge impact on staff morale and is the most visible of changes. A member of staff returning from maternity leave in June came to speak to me. She said: ‘want you to know that this is a different school than the one I left - I haven’t seen a single phone.’
Behaviour has improved: Fighting and physical altercations have pretty much been eradicated. Before this policy, as soon as a disagreement started, phones were out. It was on film, no backing down. Remove the phones from the hands of those watching, and the incidents disappear.
In school truancy has reduced to a level so low, that it now no longer exists. On the rare occasion that a child is not reported in lessons, our Pastoral Support team can pick them up in minutes. We hadn’t prepared or planned for this - so this came as a bit of a shock. We spoke to some of the old regular offenders - ‘why has this changed?’
One boy responded bluntly: ‘There is no point bunking off. There’s no one else is doing it and you can’t even watch on Netflix anymore.’
Reports of online abuse, bullying and safeguarding concerns are at a 5-year low.
The number of children reporting online peer issues has fallen dramatically, and much more than we would have expected. Again, it is the pupils who have given us the clearest insight into why we are seeing these outcomes:
“We are talking more, so misunderstandings or arguments can be had in person - they are dealt with then and we can all move on. When you do it online, it builds and builds until you feel you might explode”
“We are talking on a much deeper level than we used to - you don’t do that on phones, so we understand each other more! It is better.”
Retention of staff has improved massively. 95%+ of teaching staff are staying at the Academy. Staff are reporting much better well-being and morale - they are happier at work and therefore more likely to stay. This is very different to what is being reported at a national level. Accounts of the challenging behaviour, or higher levels of truancy and increased anti-social behaviour are reported widely.
One final thought: This was not that hard to achieve. It is something that all schools could adopt should they choose to.
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