Students at the King’s former school will no longer be able to have mobile phones in the classroom and will be required to hand them over to staff overnight.
Sixth formers are exempt from the policy, but school principal Lisa Kerr warned if they “get it wrong” their phones will also be taken away. “But there must be different rules for the use of mobile devices, as the phone apps are literally designed to be addictive, to create regular dopamine mini-hits.“Asking children to have a phone in their pocket but not respond when it buzzes with a notification is like putting a bowl of M&Ms on their desk and asking them not to take one, even when no-one is looking.
“Following a wide-ranging consultation on the impact of the mobile phone policy, we decided last week to go a step further. Other than for our sixth-formers, phones now need to be left in boarding houses during the school day and handed in overnight. And if older pupils are getting it wrong, we take their phones away too.”