DAMIAN McBEATH is principal of the John Wallis Church of England Academy in Ashford, Kent. At the start of 2024, he introduced a complete ban on access to mobile phones during school hours.
Mr McBeath’s first concern for his students was that “while they are in school, their safety is my responsibility. I couldn’t, hand on heart, say that they were safe while they had a device in their pocket that gave them access to a whole world of unsuitable content — beheading videos, pornography, everything.”
The Academy already had a rule that students must turn off their phones and leave them in their bags throughout the school day — but it was not working, “because they’re children and these things are designed to demand attention.
“Children would lock themselves in the toilet during break and watch something on Netflix. They were even doing it during lessons.” The ever-present distraction had a huge impact on learning, Mr McBeath says. What finally prompted him to take drastic action was “seeing children becoming more and more isolated from their peers”.
Every student now has a pouch, which is part of their school uniform. Each day, as they come on to the school site, they put their phone in it and it locks. As they enter the school, they are welcomed individually by a member of the pastoral team and they hold up their pouch for a quick check. Although the academy has 1400 students, “it flows really smoothly”, Mr McBeath says.
At the end of the school day, magnets around the perimeter of the site unlock the students’ pouches as they leave.
Initially, some parents were “resistant. . . A few went online saying we were denying their children’s human rights, and they were going to write to the press. We wrote to the press ourselves and explained what we were doing and why, and we got overwhelming public support,” Mr McBeath says.
“We had an evening for parents who were still concerned, and were half-expecting the hall to be full, but only six people turned up.”
A handful of students still try to beat the system, he says, but “you soon know who they are. The leadership team go round the classrooms every now and again and do spot checks, and we see about 98-per-cent compliance.
Inevitably, many students head for home after school with their eyes glued to their phones. “It’s painful to see,” Mr McBeath admits.
Other fears have not been realised, however. “We were concerned that we would push their phone time into the evening, and so they’d be sleeping less. But students have reported that they now use their phones less outside of school.
“When we asked them why, they said they were talking to each other more in school and so they were spending less time on Messenger, and in chat groups, and were no longer winding up endlessly ‘doom-scrolling’. The seven-hour [phone] break in the day has disrupted that habit of always needing your phone to engage.”
To Mr McBeath’s amazement, the new regime has also had a huge impact on online bullying. He reports an 80-per-cent reduction in the number of incidents reported to the school.
He explains that students do not see these incidents at first as deliberate bullying. Usually, a conversation on social media gets out of control. “Now they talk to each other more in school, and if there is any kind of misunderstanding, they’re able to talk it through and so it rarely escalates.”
What the school is are seeing, Mr McBeath says, is “children reconnecting with their immediate community, engaging in the here and now, and being present to the people around them”. This has led to much better relationships with their teachers and their peers.
Lessons are now calmer, he says. Teachers who used to complain that they were being filmed in class, and the video then shared on social media, report that children are holding doors open for them and being more polite.
“Behaviour around school has significantly improved. We see fewer physical altercations.” And over the last 18 months, there have been 40 per cent fewer detentions.
The upfront cost of introducing the new regime was £35,000, but the Academy has already recouped this, Mr McBeath says. The change has made a big difference to staff wellbeing and morale. “We’re seeing fewer staff off on sick leave, so we’re paying less for cover.”
Two years ago, the Academy’s annual turnover of teachers was about 23 per cent, compared with some 19 per cent nationally. “Last year, it was less than ten per cent, so we are saving money on recruitment as well.”
In 15 years as a headteacher, Mr McBeath says, he has never before seen a policy to have such an effect on a school community.
“We asked Year Seven: ‘If you could go back to how things used to be, would you want to?’ Some 60 per cent of them said, ‘No, this is much better.’ Maybe ten per cent wished they could still access their phones. The rest were not sure.”
