London school bans smartphones – only allowing students 80s style ‘bricks’

A London school is one of the first state schools in Britain to roll out a smartphone ban and only allow pupils aged between 11 and 16 a ‘brick’ phone from this month.

David Smith, headmaster of The Fulham Boys School, has introduced the move in a drive to allow children to focus on their education without the distraction of such devices as most ‘brick’ phones have no access to social media.

It comes in the wake of legislation put forward by the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak‘s Government back in February to allow schools to impose complete bans or limit smartphones in a drive to minimise disruption and improve behaviour in classrooms.

Mr Smith said he had alerted parents in a letter five months ago of the crackdown given the harmful messages shared by influencers, including Andrew Tate, and the damage caused by watching pornography.

He said: “We are in the top 5% of schools in the country, we are not making the decision because our boys are using their phones everywhere and it’s causing a behavioural problem, we are making a decision because we believe that the mental health of young people needs to be looked at.

“What we are saying to parents is you need to consider if your child has a phone in the first place.

“We educate about harmful content, we educate about pornography and we’ve had parents in to talk about these things as well. We are very very aware that our young people have access to these things.”

He added: “We are saying to parents I want to question what you are currently doing.

“What I would like is the average parent who chooses this school goes to their child and says you don’t need a phone, I’m not going to get you a smartphone in year seven as no one has them in the school anyway so you might get them in year 9.

“My belief is once you give a smartphone to a young person you are taking away their childhood, so let’s keep the childhood going for that little bit longer.”

Mr Smith, who has teamed up with Human Mobile Devices (HMD) on its The Better Phone Project, said he had taken the same decision with his own daughter to delay giving her a smartphone due to the threats posed by social media but he admitted the new policy was not popular with some of the parents.

He said: “Inevitably there are a few parents who are very very anti change but I think what we see in school are the dangers and sometimes parents don’t fully understand.

“We are not anti-technology and that’s why I’m really pleased with The Better Phone Project and working with them because we have identified ‘brick’ phones because we know there is some good use of technology.”

Private school Eton unveiled plans earlier this year to ban new pupils from bringing smartphones to the school and will give them a basic device instead.

Mr Smith said they had caught pupils with inappropriate content on their phones and that they spoke to them directly in the wake of those incidents.

Research from the HMD survey revealed 11 is the average age a child receives their first smartphone, and many parents now view it as an essential item for their child’s back-to-school-kit when they start secondary school.

Of the 50% of the 2,000 UK parents questioned, 11 felt like the right age to hand over the device but close to a quarter of British parents (22%) cited peer pressure as the reason for choosing this age.

Lars Silberbauer, CMO of HMD, said the aim of The Better Phone Project is to tackle digital overload by creating a smartphone alternative.

He added: “We hope through co-creation with parents and experts, we will get to a point where we create the perfect balance of technology for a positive relationship with mobile communications for children that has everything they need, and nothing they don’t need.”