VIcki Dean, headteacher at Tenbury High School, says visitors to her secondary school in the Worcestershire countryside think her pupils look less mature than others their age because they run around and play rather than sit huddled in front of their phones.
“When I worked at my previous school, I still remember social time being like this,” Dean said, pretending to hold a phone screen in front of his face. But Tenbury is different, with one of the strictest no-phone policies of any mainstream state secondary school in England, and Dean says that has influenced his pupils’ behaviour.
“Here, our eighth graders still play tag and chase because they have nothing else to distract them. They want to play football, they are creative, it’s an old-school game,” Dean said.
“Visitors sometimes say that their children seem immature, but I don’t think they are. I just think they are watching them play. In rural settings, when children don’t play when they get home in the evenings because they are geographically isolated, they need to learn how to play and interact, and even what to do when they are bored.
“We need to work on social behaviour and what to do to entertain themselves. We buy equipment and have lots of sports clubs to keep them busy. They are learning to socialise, the old-fashioned way.”
Until last year, Tenbury, which is part of the Ormiston Academy Trust, allowed pupils to use their phones during “social time” before the bell rang for school to start. But Dean said even that had been banned and pupils now had to hand in their phones as soon as they arrived.
Two minutes before the end of the school day, their teacher hands them their phones back as they leave. “We know they have to bring their phones, because we are a rural school and some of them travel long distances, they need to feel safe on their trips and be able to call their parents,” Dean said.
“What we have done is make the process of handing over phones safer. Children have the assurance that their phones are going to be in a secure box, that they will be protected throughout the day and that they will be looked after. Each phone is kept in a padded box and will come out in the same condition as it came in. It’s about building trust with us to hand over their phones, so they can be assured that we will look after them.”
Arthur Hall, a Year 11 pupil, said: “Phones are expensive things and they can get lost or broken if they’re kicking around in your bag all day. If they’re in that box, you know they’re locked away and safe – you never have to worry.”
Eddie Sheppard, another junior, said the policy reduced stress in other ways: “If you have your phone at school, there might be people texting you and you might want to go check it. I think it’s better[this way]because it causes less distraction.”
But would students trust themselves if they were allowed to keep their phones? “Eventually, they would get too hung up on them and start sneaking glances at them during the day. That’s bound to happen,” Hall said.
Rachel Kitley, director of Cowes Business CollegeA leading Isle of Wight secondary school, said it was in talks with parents about introducing a no-phones policy later this year.
The school’s current policy allows students to keep their phones if they are turned off. “That policy has worked well for many years, but I think it needs to change. Part of that comes from parents – according to our survey, 70% of parents want a stricter policy regarding phones. Only 5% want a more relaxed policy,” Kitley said.
“Parents mentioned (in the survey) that phones were a distraction. Someone said they were worried their daughter was obsessive, that she didn’t have the discipline not to look at it. Someone else wrote about her daughter: ‘I hate that she has a phone.’”
Parents said their biggest concerns were online bullying, exposure to strangers, the amount of time spent on social media, inappropriate messages and too much information shared online. That day Kitley said she had stopped one student because she seemed visibly distressed. “I asked her, ‘Are you OK?’ And she said, ‘I forgot my phone, I don’t feel good without it. ’”
Kitley added: “We’re asking young people to deal with more than they are capable of in terms of self-discipline and emotional regulation. It’s really hard to expect a child not to look at their phone all day, every day. I’m not sure many adults can manage that.”
But even a school with strict policies like Tenbury allows exceptions, including for students with underlying medical conditions.
Sarah Hall, Arthur’s mother, has an 8th grade son with type 1 diabetes who wears a monitor on his arm to measure his blood sugar levels. The device communicates with a smart watch and his phone, which he can take with him to school.
“For me personally, the fact that he doesn’t use his phone for anything other than his medical needs keeps him focused. You can see it in the classroom. I walk in and out of school and you can see kids are focused. And other parents I talk to feel the same way — some kids don’t even take their phones to school, they just get on and off the bus, and that’s it,” she said.