A schoolgirl was left in tears because she didn't have a smartphone to use in class. Celeste Lewis said her 11-year-old daughter Ava's school, Whitchurch High in Cardiff, encouraged pupils to use their phones in lessons to do things like look up locations on Google Earth.
Mobile phone policy is up to individual schools and there is no guidance advising them to ban them. Whitchurch High said it had an "acceptable use" policy for phones. This is discussed with student and staff groups and students are educated on the policy which is also regularly reviewed, reports BBC Wales.
Ms Lewis told the BBC she decided not to get her daughter a smartphone because of concerns about how it might affect her mental health but said she did feel pressure to get her one. The charity worker said that in Ava's last year at primary school she was the only child in her class not to have one.
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Her daughter had then come home crying "within the first week or two" of starting at Whitchurch High because she didn't have a phone to use in lessons. The school had offered Ava a laptop to help her in lessons, she said. "I feel guilty now as a parent. We said: 'If we give you an old-school Nokia, you can phone your friends, you can message your friends'.
"There's still downsides to that phone. She doesn't get the emojis that her friends send. You've got messages, you've got phone calls, and you’ve got Snake."
England and Scotland both issued guidance designed to help schools ban smartphones earlier this year. While there is no such ruling from the Welsh Government more and more schools are taking their own action curbing or banning phone use.
One such school is Ysgol Penrhyn Dewi in St David’s where pupils are told to hand in their phones at the start of the school day and collect them when they leave. Some parents “were not happy” but banning phones from lessons and break times has improved almost everything, said head teacher Rachel Thomas when the policy was introduced.
Lessons and break times at Ysgol Penrhyn Dewi in St David’s are no longer disrupted by texting or worse like sexting or sharing inappropriate chats and images. At the end of the first term under the new no-phone policy she said exclusions and bullying at the Church in Wales all-age school were also down.
Pupils at Ysgol Aberconwy in Conwy are told to put their phones in locked pouches at the start of the school day and swipe them open as they leave. The “school phone-free zone” has stopped cyber-bullying while children are socialising and concentrating better as they can’t play on their phones during lessons and breaktimes, said head teacher Ian Gerrard earlier this year.
Cardiff West Community High School has banned phones for pupils, staff, and visitors during the day. Mary Immaculate High School in Cardiff has made its pupil wellbeing centre, The Churchill Centre, a phone-free zone and Llanishen High in Cardiff does not allow mobile phone use during school hours..
