Coventry leading the way on school phone ban
Coventry City Council say work on banning phones in schools started well before this week's letter from education secretary Bridgit Philipson
Coventry’s schools are among those leading the way when it comes to phone-free classrooms according to the city council’s cabinet member responsible for education across the city.
Cllr Dr Kindy Sandhu said work started long before this week’s letter to schools from education secretary Bridget Phillipson which said children should not be using their phones during lessons, breaks and lunchtime, with Ofsted monitoring how schools implement the policy.
The minister’s message to headteachers followed an announcement the government would be launching a three-month consultation on banning social media for all under-16s in the UK.
Cllr Sandhu said: “We started looking at this last summer. We have what we call a family of schools partnership and it is all about working in collaboration with the schools. We went to Westwood School and spoke to the head teacher and the chief executive. That was last July.
“They’d introduced it the previous September so they talked to us about it, explaining to us the kind of challenges that they faced and why they chose to do it – because they wanted kids to focus on learning. They suggested that we spoke to a number of pupils, which we did, and the first we spoke to said it was about trust which led to the head teacher allowing pupils to give phones to their mentors.
“These young people we spoke to talked about how they didn’t like it at first but what they found was that lessons were less disruptive. The teachers did not have to tell them to put their phone away and they also said there were fewer fights being instigated because kids weren’t recording.
“But the thing that really touched me was that they said they were freer to talk. Because there were no phones, they could say what they wanted to say without the fear of them being recorded.”
Cllr Sandhu added that one of the children said they didn’t even bother taking the phone to school and that when they got home, they didn’t look at it as much as they used to and talked to their parents more. Some of the children also thought that the ban should be extended to primary schools.
She added: “So I’ve been to a primary school to talk to parents there and also to governors and I’ve not come across anyone who was negative. Everybody said they want this. And I found that parents want help as well. They face challenges trying to get the kids off these devices.
“As cabinet member, I don’t think I could sleep well at night if I’m not doing anything to help young people and help children. This is one of the reasons why we’ve been pushing this. But we want to work collaboratively and one of the things I’ve said to the officers is that I want to get young people involved in how we design the campaign. Speaking to these young people made me think that, actually, this is this is the right way to it.”