The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)

Scotland’s schools must do more to crack down on mobile phones in playground­s

I’m trying to pinpoint when I realised my son’s school had no sensible mobile phone policy. Perhaps it was when an older pupil showed him a video of a man being beheaded by Isis. Or perhaps it was when he was shown hardcore pornograph­y in the playground.

Westminste­r recently announced updated guidance on mobile phones in schools for England, which gives backing to head teachers who want to ban them during the school day. We’re told guidance for Scotland is on the way.

To my astonishme­nt, the response from the Associatio­n of School and College Leaders was scathing.

This new guidance, it said, was a “non policy for a non problem.” My experience is that such a policy is desperatel­y needed in Scotland. My son’s school was not a big inner-city school, it was rural with a small school roll. There were not thousands of phones to deal with.

We reported the shocking videos being shared in the playground, but never heard anything more about it. The best we could do was install software on our son’s phone, so that at least he couldn’t download or view such content himself. Someone in the playground promptly showed him how to install an app which bypassed this software.

When we concluded that our son wasn’t mature enough for a mobile phone at all, not only did the school not support our parental decision, they actively worked against us.

We were accused of not allowing him to meet friends because he didn’t have access to social media. There was no acknowledg­ement that he could make arrangemen­ts to see friends verbally any time he liked.

Not only that, but he was allocated photograph­y lessons, which was not one of his subject choices, and which required a mobile phone in order to do the coursework. Yes, we could have bought him a camera, but this would mark him out further as the kid with no phone, which is why we didn’t select photograph­y as a course in the first place.

Then, there was the fact that homework was accessed via an app. While a parental version was available, we found out it didn’t contain the homework tasks.

In state schools, the current “robust policies” on mobile phones, championed by the Associatio­n of School and College Leaders, seem to involve handing back responsibi­lity to the child. A 12 or 13-year-old cannot keep a promise to use their phone wisely.

Yes, there may be controls in lessons, but if it’s the Wild West in the playground then that’s not a policy. If you have the money to send your child to an independen­t school, however, you will find more robust policies. Parents demand it, and head teachers know it leads to better educationa­l outcomes.

In the decadesahe­ad, we will look back on this period in the same way as we look back on the way bullying was dealt with in the 1970s and 1980s. The advice to “toughen up and deal with it” has echoes of today’s attitude that “young people need to learn how to act responsibl­y”.

It’s the children who have experience­d trauma who suffer most in this unregulate­d space. They’re the ones who are less mature and more reckless, who are most likely to be exploited, and to view or share inappropri­ate content. Or, they are singled out among their peers because worried parents do the school’s job and remove the phone altogether, while other kids run around with the latest expensive model.

I understand that it will be timeconsum­ing to ask kids to hand over phones every morning, or for staff to confiscate them during the day, but such a policy also recognises that kids make mistakes, and teaching staff can’t be everywhere all the time. It will reduce the time spent dealing with online bullying and the sharing of inappropri­ate material.

I have another child who has earned our trust and takes his phone to school. It’s a different school, and we’ve not yet encountere­d any problems. I asked him whether any other pupils had shown him anything on their phone which they shouldn’t. It turns out that, yes, a kid had been sharing a video in the playground of “a naked girl doing strange things”.

Social media and the internet are unregulate­d spaces where it is hard to keep children safe. When Unesco concludes that mobile phones disrupt learning in classrooms and we know they are being used to share everything from terrorist videos to porn in the playground, it’s time to conclude that current policies in Scottish schools aren’t working and to introduce new ones.

≤ Eleanor Bradford is a former BBC Scotland health correspond­ent and now works in communicat­ions