Article: From a phoney ban to an effective phone ban

Damian McBeath

“I’m sorry to interrupt, we have a Mr Davies down in the Reception foyer, who has turned up unannounced demanding to speak to a member of SLT or yourself; he seems pretty irate and says it’s an urgent safeguarding issue. His child has just called him to say he is being called names by another pupil.”

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 many schools like ours.

A pivotal moment in which I knew change was absolutely necessary 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 a sense of shame and disappointment. To have such incidents happen is bad enough, but confounded so much more so when shared for all to see online. I felt like I was letting my community down and 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, ‘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, we were all working together. 

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, then 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. 

We keep hearing reports of the challenges of behaviour in schools, the negative impact of smartphones and social media posts shared to cause maximum damage; we were seeing living this reality. 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 Tiktok - 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. The out and out phone ban was a non-starter, and for good reason. The consequences of the travel issues could not be overcome, we needed another plan.    

Full disclosure; as is usually the case, the next part happened by chance rather than clever strategic planning. A member of SLT returning from a comedy gig at the O2 was talking before our weekly meeting with a colleague about these clever pouches they had used to stop people from recording the gig. A quick google search of the ‘Yondr pouch’ revealed that they had been implemented in schools in the US, Australia and New Zealand. A phone call later and we had the beginnings of a plan. 

The concept is simple; all children were to be given their own lockable 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, give them out again at the end of the day etc.

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. It was now late November 2023, we wanted to launch in January, so next steps were

1. Plan the logistics and anticipate any issues (how were we going to make this work? think of as many ‘what ifs’ as we could and the solutions to these issues)

2. Communicate:

3. Engage the wider leadership team and staff (more what ifs)

4. Communicate to parents and pupils

5. Prepare 

6. Launch

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 well being check in, 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 pupil’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. 

Consequence for not having a pouch (warning - three warnings in a half-term, lead to a detention)

If pupils do not have a pouch and they hand their phone to their year leader, it will be locked away for them to collect at the end of the day.

If pupils do not volunteer a phone, but their phone is seen during the school day. It will be 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 throughout the day conduct a bag search. Pupils know this. 

The communication was interesting.

Staff were supportive, they liked the concept and knew we needed to do something.

There was a degree of ‘let’s see if this one works’ after all we had been banging our heads against a wall trying to implement the existing school phone policy - why would this be any different. A few good questions over logistics and how pupils would lock/unlock the pouches but we had a good understanding of what we would be doing and how we could make it work.

Next we told the pupils and wrote to their parents on the same day. 

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 ‘taking this to Ofsted and the press!!’ So we obliged and took the story ourselves to our local paper; a report on our plans was shared as a story and it received a lot of local support and praise. Being proactive with the story helped quieten some of the conspiracy rumours that were being circulated by our facebook friends. 

We held an information evening for parents; which had a very low turnout - details of the plans had been shared in writing to parents and were being reported in local newspapers and as we approached the end of the Autumn term, the plans were in place for the new policy to be implemented after Christmas. We had our plans, we had communicated them well; now we needed to make sure the implementation was tight and consistent and sustained over time. 

Preparing for the launch:

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 a key one. 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 was happening, this was important. We planned for ‘what if some children refuse to put their phones in the pouches; 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. 

4th January 2024:

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, 

“Happy new year!!! 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!”

I had one, brave refuser on my round. She was taken to the hall to wait for a further conversation. As I finished, I recognised the role of humour - playing down the ‘will you, won’t you’ element to any discussion and making light of it, ‘a new year’s gift, just for you.’ 

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 January, 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 and behaviour is as good as it has ever been. One Governor, who has served the school for over 15 years commented on ‘the most productive and engaged he has seen children’ after his learning walk in early March. 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; ‘I had read your emails about the impact - but I want you to know that this is a different school than the one I left - I haven’t seen a single phone.’  

Fighting and physical altercations have pretty much been eradicated. It’s never nice to hear that issues have arisen that have led to a fight or physical altercation in school. Before this policy, as soon as a disagreement started, phones were out. It was on film, no backing down.

Take the phones out of the hands of those gathering and the incidents, disagreements 

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, no one else is doing it and you can’t even watch on Netflix anymore?

Not the best of reasons to go to class - but I will take that for now! Small gains. ’

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; more than we would have expected. Most issues started outside of school and continued in but this seemed to suggest that the issues were very much school related. Again the pupils 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 staying. 

The statements of impact listed above are bold ones that are contrary 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.

They can all be verified through data, and through interviews with the children themselves - and have been on numerous occasions. But perhaps, the boldest statement of all is this; this was not that hard to achieve and is something that all schools could adopt should they choose too. I genuinely believe this. I would argue that many schools will achieve even more impressive results than ours. 

Over time we will see the impact in pupil assessment data as well as those mentioned above. The narrative below is a detailed account of how we made the transition from a phoney ban to an effective phone ban.