School's back, but phones aren't. At least that's the case in more than 40 public high
schools across South Australia this term, including this one behind me. It's all part
of a new policy by the state government to start putting a full ban on phones during school hours.
It is my firm view that mobile phones do not have a place in the classroom or in the school.
You might know that's not a totally new concept. In 2020, Victoria became the
first state to bring in a full phone ban at all public primary and high schools.
I know that it won't be universally popular, but in my view it's the right thing to do.
And phones are already banned in most primary schools around Australia. The idea is to stop
students getting distracted by TikTok or texting, and to stop online bullying and
harassment at least during school hours. So, how do you get everyone to put these down,
all day, every school day? Well, there are a few options like making students
turn their phones off or put them on silent and in lockers, or bags, or there are these.
Okay Josh, so what is this? So this is the new phone policy
we have at our school, it’s a phone pouch. So every morning we have to put our phones in here,
so you open this. May I take your phone please? Will I get it back?
Yes, you’ll get it back at the end of the day. At the end of the day? Okay.
And your phone slips in like that, press down and it’s now locked until the end of the day where you
go back to the station where this lock is kept inside a box which is also locked which prevents
kids during recess and lunch to go and open up their phones and use it when they’re not supposed
to. And now you have your phone. I got it back early.
Yes. So are teachers going
around and checking this throughout the day? We have daily checks where teachers come in to
check and feel the pouches to see if your phones are in there and to see if it’s locked or not.
This high school is one of a handful that chose to pay tens of thousands of dollars for these
little lockable phone bags for every student. Starting school again this term was the first
time any of these students had used them. Have you seen anyone try to get these open?
Yes many people have tried, but I haven’t seen anyone succeed to open these just yet.
So it works? Yes.
I’ve been many people irritated with... I think I’m like the only one who isn’t irritated by it.
A lot of people are quite frustrated that it’s obvious they can’t trust us with our phones.
We’re so reliant upon our devices, it’s going to
be hard to adjust but give us some time and hopefully that’ll be a good detox.
It's not just phones either. In some schools, the rules also apply to any personal devices
that connect to the internet or phone networks, like smartwatches and tablets,
even earbuds, but not devices provided by a school or approved for schoolwork.
Of course, like most policies, there are exceptions,
like for students that need their devices for medical reasons, as support for disabilities or
learning difficulties, or to translate English if it isn't their first language. Although some
students reckon there should be other exceptions. One part that I would like to see change maybe
is the earbuds. I think that when I study. I find that when I study I study best with music.
Our parents don’t really know English really well and they use the phones to communicate with us.
Like what if there’s an emergency or something and you need to call home and you can’t and like
it’s a private matter and you don’t want to go and talk to the school about it.
Education is the responsibility of each state and territory, which means they can have different
rules and regulations. In South Australia, like most other states and territories it's
been up to individual schools to decide how to manage phone use, and that's still the case for
non-government schools. Most have policies or recommend high schoolers turn phones off and
put them away at least during class, but that can be hard for teachers to monitor.
So Amani what’s your school's phone policy at the moment?
Yeah so at the moment we have to put our phones in our lockers at the start of the
day and get them out at the end of the day but we can check them at recess and lunch.
But by the end of Term Two, all public high schools in SA will have to do the full phone ban.
That will definitely I think will be a huge change for all students. We’ve become dependent on our
phones. That will be a bit of detox for us. I guess that brings us back to the reasons.
In the past few years there have been times when violent fights during or after school
have been filmed on phones and put on people's social media. There have also
been plenty of reports of bullying and harassment online, including students
taking photos of other students at school and sharing them without their permission.
Personally, I’ve actually been cyberbullied at school, like,
photos have been taken of me and like posted you know like around social media platforms.
When people go home they can still do the same thing so it’s not really going to change much.
It does do something to reduce the bullying and it does do something
to reduce the perpetuation of it. I believe it doesn’t really target the real problem.
Everybody is just resorting to traditional bullying that’s what they’re going to do if
they really want to bully, they’re going to do it to someone’s face.
Like, for the people who get bullied at school and then also have it at home, it’s like they’re no
escape so I feel like it’ll be really good to be able to have the no phone policy so those things
at least can’t happen from school. And then there's still that whole
distraction thing... uh oh, oh sorry. Can I get this? One sec. Hi Mum! Yeah,
nah it’s all good, we’re just filming...
I feel more motivated to do my work now because last year I did get a bit distracted
with using my phone in class.
Personally, I think this is a really good idea to roll out across high schools
There's already been so much more socialisation between myself and my friends
The biggest win for students is that we get an eight-hour period where we're all off
our phones and we have these real face-to-face conversations.