Phone-Free School

We have decided to ban mobile phones from the school site from 2 June 2025 to prioritise student wellbeing and enhance learning. We will be using a system provided by Yondr to support this change.

Excessive phone use has been linked to increased anxiety, sleep disruption, and decreased face-to-face social interactions, all of which can negatively impact mental health. Additionally, phones can be a major distraction in the classroom, reducing focus and engagement with lessons. With Yondr, students will securely lock their phones in a pouch at the start of the school day, making them inaccessible until the end of the school day.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Yondr pouches can be found below:

FAQs

Banning mobile phones will help create a more focused and interactive learning environment where students can participate in discussions, develop critical thinking skills, and build stronger relationships with their peers. This policy is intended to support academic success and overall student wellbeing.

Please discuss with your children their phone usage and what they are accessing on their devices. The following two documents may help you understand the emoji’s and words that are being used in conversations on social media apps. We are seeing an increase in incidents affecting individual wellbeing and learning. By working together, we can help young people use their devices appropriately, ensuring safety and developing positive habits around phone usage. Taking a break from devices during the school day is part of this approach.

The charity a smartphone free childhood is doing a lot of work on this. This link following link will take you to their resources page, from which you can explore the wider website.

Please watch the presentation below from Mr Fletcher regarding the new phone-free school implementation. 

Mr Fletcher's PowerPoint presentation regarding the new procedures can be found HERE.

A study was done at Carnegie Mellon University on the impact of phones in the classroom, and the short clip below highlights their findings: