Teesside school proactively stopping the use of smartphones in classrooms
A ban on smartphones in England schools came into force yesterday
A Teesside primary school say they're proactively trying to stop children from using their phones to browse social media in classrooms.
Thorntree Academy in Middlesbrough have a 'no phone policy' with a box at reception to place them in.
Mike Foster, deputy headteacher, said: "We have a no phone policy in terms of for children in school. The few children that do bring devices are generally the older ones who might potentially walk home alone. They need to have those communications with parents and carers on the way, but we would always ask for them to be handed in at reception and our children are pretty good at doing that.
"From an educational point of view, I don't see the need for those devices to be in the building because we have devices which are safe for children to use, they don't have communication metrics with their peers within school. So from that point of view within our building, you know, it's something that we're already on top of."
It comes as a ban on smartphones in England schools came into force yesterday.
It'll be up to each school to decide how to enforce the new rules - they'll have to be followed from September.
It's separate to the social media ban for under-16s.
Mike added: "It's a difficult one really because we wouldn't generally direct our children to learn through any of those platforms. I know that some children do have interests in YouTube and that side of it, but I think there's other avenues as well that they can explore in terms of video production and all of those types of things.
"From our point of view, we don't have a lot of children who generally broadcast into those YouTube because we're a primary school. I think for older children it might be something that secondaries are looking at and going, 'what's going to be the impact of it?' Because there's a lot of jobs and things now through social media and through those avenues, but equally it's got to be safe."