'Point scoring' - an ex teacher's view on 'banning' of smartphones in schools - video Dailymotion

Sunderland Echo

Sunderland Echo reporter and former teacher Neil Fatkin discusses the use of smartphones in schools - and reacts to recent government guidance on their use there.

Transcript

00:00 My name's Neil Fatkin. At the moment I'm a reporter for Sun and Echo. Before that I was

00:04 education reporter at the News in Portsmouth. But this is a career change for me. Previously for

00:09 17 years I worked in secondary schools as a geography teacher primarily, but also as head

00:14 of geography, head of humanities and also a variety of other middle management roles.

00:18 I mean obviously I saw this directive which came out from the government back in February,

00:22 basically saying that mobile phones shouldn't be allowed in schools. I mean I must say initially

00:28 that I think in many ways that this announcement and this directive is a bit of an unentity because

00:32 in my experience in schools that's what the policy was. I mean

00:36 certainly schools that I worked in did not allow children to have phones out in classrooms and

00:43 it definitely could be a disruption. It just depends on whether the directive means a complete

00:50 ban in schools, as in you can't even bring them in, or whether it's just following on now from

00:54 what schools already do, which as I say most schools will not allow kids to have their mobile

00:58 phones out in school. It certainly could be disruptive, although I must say I didn't have

01:03 to deal with it too many times in lessons. It used to be an issue more than anyways in registration

01:08 time because once you've done the register it was often sort of 10-15 minutes of dead time wasted

01:14 that the kids wait to go off to lessons. And that's where you tend to find they would get

01:18 their mobile phones out, but obviously as a teacher the directive we'd been given is that

01:22 mobile phones could be allowed in school, but were allowed out in classrooms. That included

01:26 registration time, so that was often an area and part of the day where it did become an issue

01:32 because in their mind they thought well I'm not in a lesson as such, I'm in registration, you know,

01:37 why can't I have my mobile phone out? But also obviously not everyone's got to be consistent,

01:41 if that's what the message is in school that's what you've got to do. I mean I always,

01:49 it was a big area of conflict, I think mobile phones compared to other things when it came

01:53 to confiscating things was always the area where there's the biggest chance of a flare-up, of a

01:58 conflict with the students because I think mobile phones are so personal to them and indeed there

02:02 probably is personal information on there, so unlike maybe a pair of trainers or a jacket,

02:07 if you ever had to confiscate something, mobile phones was the biggest one which they didn't want

02:11 to hand over. You know, and I've had kids really dig the heels and what have you and had to get

02:16 removed from the classroom before they would hand over and that sort of thing and it can be a

02:20 disruption. It happened a few times in lessons, let's say it was mainly in registration time and

02:27 the policy we used to implement in our school was that if a child had to have their phone confiscated

02:32 it wasn't a case of them going and collecting at the end of the day, it used to be put an envelope

02:35 and that would go down to reception and then parents were called in the day to come and collect

02:40 it. I mean the idea there being is to get parents on board with supporting the policy that mobile

02:46 phones shouldn't be out in the classroom because obviously imagine if you're a parent and you've

02:49 got the inconvenience of coming in after school to collect a mobile phone then you know you're

02:53 going to be hopefully, you know, saying to your student you know you shouldn't have it out in

02:57 lessons, I don't want you coming into school. So that was our policy, it wasn't just the kid who

03:01 you know was inconvenienced by it, it was also the parent as well. What I would say though and

03:08 obviously as a teacher, particularly as an experienced teacher, we had the discretion to

03:13 if you wanted the kids to get mobile phones out we could because actually it could be a really

03:16 good learning tool. I mean a lot of the things we did were you know possibly based on independent

03:22 learning, you want the kids to research things for themselves, find things out for themselves.

03:25 If you couldn't get a computer room you know at their fingertips here kids have got a really

03:30 useful learning tool which they could find things out from. When we did field trips that sort of

03:35 thing again always they could use it to get video, they could just get photographs and so it is

03:40 actually a really useful learning tool. So in that sense a blanket ban on having phones in school would

03:46 sort of eradicate that as a good learning resource. So I think you know that is something which

03:52 needs to be considered. I do remember on things like ski trips, I mean I used to do geography

04:00 trips and I never banned mobile phones but I do remember on the school ski trip they were banned

04:04 and the idea being is that if kids were away from home or another country we didn't want parents

04:12 getting information second hand. So obviously if for example there'd been an injury on the

04:17 ski slope and a teacher had gone off to hospital with a student what we didn't want was friends

04:21 getting their phone out and phoning Mr and Mrs Smith and telling them oh little Johnny's gone

04:26 off to hospital when it might actually be something quite minor and you know I was a couple of times

04:30 I went to hospital with kids on ski trips and you know there was a bump on the head or a sprained

04:34 ankle and what have you but you can imagine if they'd got a phone call from one of the child's

04:39 friends saying that they've gone off to hospital imagine the panic which goes on at home and that

04:44 sort of thing about oh my god what's happened to my son or daughter. So we actually banned phones

04:49 coming on ski trips and from memory yeah I don't think there's any other issues with the kids

04:54 bringing them along. The only thing I'd say on that now is as a parent and I wasn't a parent at the time,

04:58 now a parent, if my son or daughter was away in another country on someone like a ski trip I would

05:03 probably feel a bit more confident and comfortable if I knew I could contact them as in when. I

05:08 suppose you've just got to trust the school's judgment that the teachers will do the

05:13 the right thing if there's some sort of incident which takes place. Obviously cyberbullying can be

05:19 a big thing with mobile phones and that was something which became more and more apparent in

05:23 my time in the classroom. It's about five or six years now since I was last teaching but obviously

05:27 even by then you know mobile phones are widely used nearly every child had them and

05:31 Facebook was around and Twitter and WhatsApp these are all things for being used then.

05:35 I do remember dealing with you know certain situations of kids coming to my registration time

05:41 upset and where things have been posted on social media or that messages put on there which

05:47 which they didn't want on there and we had the police come in and talk about cyberbullying and

05:52 you know potential crimes which could take place online. It also became a big part of the PSHA

05:58 program so it was actually taught as a unit in school so it was definitely an issue. The only

06:03 thing I'd say about that is I don't think banning schools and banning phones in schools is going to

06:08 solve that. From my experience most of this took place outside of school and then followed into

06:14 school the next day and when kids were in their bedrooms or at bedtime when they're at home.

06:21 I think if they want to tackle that what the government look at more so is the social media

06:24 platforms like WhatsApp, like Twitter, like TikTok. My understanding is that the legal age to sign up

06:30 these platforms is 13 which for me is too young. I mean how you regulate that is obviously very

06:38 difficult. I mean how do kids prove their age? Maybe obviously you've got to be 16 to get a

06:42 national insurance number maybe you've got to hand that across as some kind of detail. I don't know

06:46 but I just think there should be something more stringent in place to make it harder for kids to

06:50 get on these sites and I think 13 is too young an age. But banning phones in school isn't going to

06:55 solve that problem because that was generally something which takes place outside of school

06:59 and if it didn't happen in school it's going to happen from a child in their bedroom or whoever

07:04 they are once they're outside of those school hours. So in terms of the principle I certainly

07:09 agree with the principle that phones should not be out in lessons generally but I do think a teacher

07:14 should have the discretion to use it because I say it's a useful learning tool. Going back to my

07:19 original point I think this directive which has come out from the government you know telling

07:24 schools that mobile phones shouldn't be used in classrooms it's common sense and something schools

07:29 are doing anyway and so I do think in many ways it's a point scoring because it looks like the

07:33 government are cracking down on you know disruption in schools but yeah there's no classroom I've ever

07:40 been in where a teacher will knowingly allow kids to be out on their mobile phones it's just not

07:44 something which which is allowed and 95% of kids will conform with that and yes there's always going

07:51 to be the odd few who try and push against it but yeah I do think it was more of a point scoring

07:58 exercise in terms of getting political favour than anything actual actually new which is being

08:03 announced for the schools to do because they're doing it anyway.

'Point scoring' - an ex teacher's view on 'banning' of smartphones in schools

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