Ormiston Academies Trust’s vision is of a school system where every child can thrive. This means that young people’s learning, behaviour and wellbeing are our top priorities. Smartphones act as a barrier to those aims.
They distract from learning, allow children to view and share damaging content, and permit trends like filming teachers and peers without consent and posting the content online.
If that isn’t enough, there is also a clear link between smartphone use and the adolescent mental health crisis, aided and abetted by social pressure to be online.
For all these reasons and more, we want our pupils to have phone-free school days.
This is already the case in our primary and secondary schools and in our alternative provision settings.
This term, 8 of our 32 secondary schools are introducing phone-free approaches. Not in bags by desks. Not in pockets during lessons. Fully phone-free.
Our schools are at different stages of this journey. Tenbury High Ormiston Academy in Worcestershire has worked in this way for years. Phones are handed in by students at the start of the day, kept in a locked box and then returned when school ends.
It’s been a huge success. Parents and students support it. Our principal there is enthusiastic about how young people play together and speak to each other, rather than being head down, eyes on their screens. The Ofsted inspection report confirms this.
Other schools are introducing different approaches and, as always with change in schools, so much of this is about the logistics.
Pouch options are being trialled at our academy on the Isle of Wight and at Cliff Park in Norfolk after consultations with parents. There are different versions, sizes and price points. Some block the signal so messages to the phone aren’t picked up by smart watches.
Phones are placed in individual pouches at the start of the day, which are secured by a magnet and kept in students’ bags until the magnet is released at the end of the day. Velcro options are available for those students who need to be able to release their phone quickly, such as for medical reasons.
Not in bags. Not in pockets. Fully phone-free
Ormiston Chadwick adopted a locked box solution at the start of this term. There is a register at the start of the day when phones are handed in, with a number allocated to each student. The boxes are double-checked by a second member of staff to ensure every phone tallies with the register and the number, before the boxes are locked in a room.
This system means any phone can be found easily and handed back to students who need to leave early. The process of returning phones at the end of the day is also quick. Students with a medical need keep their phones in their bags so they can access them, but the new culture means they don’t get them out unless needed.
The school wrote to parents in advance to explain the change and invited feedback or comments from any parent who had questions or wanted to discuss it. Only one parent replied – and their feedback helped improve the system before it came in.
Students (and especially older girls) are supportive, saying they are no longer “held hostage by their phone”. An English teacher says their year 11 group is the most focused they have seen.
Other Ormiston schools will follow in their own time and in their own way. Decisions around how and when to implement will continue to be taken locally, and always in collaboration and consultation with parents.
As they learn from one another on this issue, we have also been grateful to learn from schools outside our trust who have gone phone-free. Likewise, we will share our findings and experiences with any school who might find it helpful.
Our trust and schools are far from unique in prioritising learning, behaviour and wellbeing, nor are ours the first to go phone-free; this is part of a sector-wide movement that we’re proud to be a part of.
We think it is desirable (perhaps even inevitable) that our school system is moving this way – and maybe quicker than we had previously realised.
