4 steps to creating a smartphone free school
Step 1: Diagnose the problem
Is your policy genuinely prohibiting the use of mobile phones throughout the school day, as recommended by government? If not, how is this manifesting and what is the impact on behaviour, engagement and student safety?
Some of the issues schools report are:
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Arguments and bullying that started on social media crossing over into the school day.
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Children watching inappropriate content in the toilets.
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Children filming themselves in the toilets and posting it on TikTok.
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Safeguarding issues related to videos being uploaded from lessons.
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An increase in physical fights, often captured on devices and shared online.
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Parents arriving at school in the middle of day, demanding to speak to a Senior Leader because their child is being bullied. Parents arriving at school in the middle of day to collect a child who has contacted them to say they are unwell and want to go home.
Step 2: Engage and Educate:
Take in the views of stakeholders to build a compelling case for change. Some headteachers skip this stage, depending on their leadership style! Take every opportunity to discuss the issues of mobile phones with parents and pupils and to educate them on the body of evidence showing the harms smartphones do to young people. At the school gates, during events and in tutor/lesson time.
Pupil surveys: anonymous surveys about students’ current smartphone usage, exposure to upsetting or inappropriate content via their smartphones and experiences of online bullying, commonly yield shocking data. Sharing this data helps build consensus about the scale and urgency of the problem within the school community.
Parent events: typically only a small minority of parents will turn up to dedicated information events but they can be important champions and the act of hosting a dedicated event flags smartphones as an urgent issue. For more info on talks, see our talks page. Establish what parents' concerns are about removing smartphones and give them an opportunity to share their feelings on the wider topic - many may be struggling to limit smartphone use at home. See our answers to common pushbacks from parents.
Step 3: Design your policy and implementation plan
Based on our experience, we believe brick-only policies are the most effective and easiest to police because they’re the only policy that affect parental behaviour, and dissuade parents from buying a device in the first place. Many schools are now bringing in brick phone policies for new Year 7s, with the intention of rolling this up the school.
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Other policies, (such as lockers and pouches) do go a long way to genuinely removing smartphones from the school day, and each school leader must decide what will work best in his/ her setting. When you have chosen a policy, think about everything that could possibly go wrong, and how you would address each situation. For example:
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What if the children refuse to put their phone in their pouch?
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What happens if children forget their pouches?
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What happens if a child breaks their pouch?
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What happens if a child is seen on their phone around school?
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What happens if there is a family emergency and the parent needs to speak to their child?
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What about medical conditions which rely on access to phones?
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What about the cost?
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Click here for a sample FAQs document.
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Carefully plan the launch day: day one in particular should be given a lot of thought. For example, teachers should be drilled as to their role, and time should be allowed for spot checks. It’s also worth planning exactly how you’ll deal with any refusal to comply.
Step 4: Communicate clearly
Every school leader has his/her own style of communication and school protocols differ. Damian McBeath, Principal of The John Wallis Church of England Academy, Kent, who has successfully introduced pouches, says it’s key to engage staff early and to own the narrative when the policy goes public:
“Engaging the staff at an early stage was important. Once we had worked out the ‘what ifs’ we engaged in a series of faculty discussions, asking staff to review plans and come up with any potential issues. We provided a series of slides and important information for them to share with pupils. The key message was ‘this is not punitive; we are doing this because we want to improve our learning environment for everyone.’
Staff then shared these slides with pupils during tutor time. There was a bit of a buzz around school the day it was shared. There was quite a bit of posturing and a few comments such as, ‘I won’t be using a stupid pouch!’. But nothing that wasn’t manageable.
That evening, parents were informed by letter and by social media. The overall response was quiet. It didn’t seem to have gathered much attention or traction. A small but vocal group decided to start a mini campaign on Facebook to rubbish the idea. There were comments such as ‘this is against human rights; our pupils need to get in touch with us; my child is being bullied and needs his phone to tell me; what about children with SEND; what about anxious pupils?’
… as well as the standard…’We are taking this to Ofsted and the local press!’
It was at this point that we decided to own the story ourselves, so we contacted the local press. The news was well received within the local community, and if anything it took the wind out of those trying to create their own narrative on Facebook.”
Get in touch
Many head teachers tell us that implementing a smartphone free school policy has transformed their culture. If you’d like to speak a head who’s done it, get in touch.