Highland parents on potential school mobile device ban: ‘It is possible to live without using a mobile for eight hours’ but absolute restriction sparks ire
“It is possible to live without using a mobile phone for eight hours.”
Parents have been reacting to Highland Council’s decision to agree to consult on a potential ban of mobile devices in schools.
The views of those who contacted us were far from uniform as some called for decisive action while others queried the nature of any potential ban.
Last week, the council unanimously agreed to a motion put forward by former teacher Michael Gregson, who is now an Inverness councillor, and Helen Crawford.
“We want to protect our children and young people, and to give them the best educational opportunities,” he said.
“What the psychologists are calling emotional dysregulation, and pupil disengagement are very real in our classrooms. This is catastrophic.
“The fact is that nearly a quarter of children spend more than four hours a day on an internet-enabled device”.
Under the proposals a full consultation will be run by schools that will involve pupils, parents, teachers and staff.
They also wanted the council to “further commit to give fulsome support to schools seeking to implement a ban on pupil use of phones during the school day”.
Since our report a number of parents have been having their say on the matter, raising issues like safety, privacy, concentration.
While some concerns were expressed about an outright ban on school grounds in which case kids may be unreachable when there is good reason to be in contact.
Here is what they told us:
Kirsty Jones:
Having read your article with interest, I would say that the council needs to take decisive steps on this front. My youngest child is in a high school which has not banned the use of mobile phones but claims to have a policy of no phones in class. This is blatantly not happening.
Pupils and staff are regularly filmed and photographed without permission. Meeting up in toilets during class is arranged. The current senior management refuse to implement an outright ban saying that most pupils behave responsibly. The stress caused not only to my child, but to many other pupils and staff is incalculable.
Rosalind Fraser Salter:
Is it time Highland Council acted decisively to ban mobile phone use in schools? This is a subject I have been trying to raise ever since our children went back to school after the lockdowns. I was shut down by the parent council, head teacher and the chair of education at the council. No one wanted to listen.
Thankfully the now bestselling book ‘The Anxious Generation’ by Jonathan Haidt has done all the in depth analysis needed for us all to see just the extent of the harm being done and people are starting to listen and take action.
Clearly my stance is that smartphones should be banned in school and parents should be urged not to give their children these types of phones until they are 16. They are simply too damaging to their development. The reasons for this are obvious and covered in the book mentioned above.
Quite simply: children need to be children. Simple text and call phones are all children need to communicate and be safe when out and about.
Beryl Leslie:
It is possible to live without using a mobile phone for eight hours! It is obvious to anyone of my generation that kids, while in school , do not need a distraction of any kind, let alone from a phone which is a computer in a pocket.
Surely schools can have a secure means of storing any which are considered necessary to keep track of children while journeying to and from school. There are mobile phones which are only phones, and are suitable for children’s journey tracking.
Sarah Jane:
I would like more information on this. What exactly do they mean by banning phones? Does that mean the children would not be allowed phones on school property at all? If that is the case, then absolutely not, no they should not ban them. As a working mum that is juggling work and my daughters after school activities and life in general, I need to be able to contact my daughter.
I appreciate that during school hours she should not have her phone and I am happy for her teacher to have it, or if she were provided a secure locker, I would be happy for her to keep it in there, but after school hours she should have access to her phone so I am able to get in contact with her if needed and since she is only 10 and I am at work, she goes to her grandparents after school so would not be able to access her phone which would be at home.
