[andyjohnson0]

From TFA:

> The schools have agreed that if any phone is used by a pupil during the school day, it will be confiscated.

In my experience as a parent, this is nothing new. Until last year one of my children went to a very large secondary school in the UK (not in London though). The above was the rule for all of the seven years they were at the school: if you kept your phone out of sight and set to dnd then you were ok, but if it was visible then it was confiscated. My impression as a parent is that it was reasonably well observed by students and enforced by staff.

Context: We have an election here in the UK in ~2 weeks and phones in schools have been a minor moral panic issue that some of the parties are trying to use to assert their education credentials. I'm not saying there is no problem with children and phones - I believe there is - but theres a reason its getting attention at the moment.

[vidarh]

Yeah, same for me. I think my sons primary school had a policy of no phones, but they also had a (and this I find more ridiculous) policy of kids being dropped off or picked up, so there was no argument of them needing it to get in touch with their parents. He joined an early intake at a secondary and there they had to keep it out of sight. His subsequent schools have required them to be in lockers or out of sight on school grounds or not brought to school at all. He's been to more schools than I wish he'd needed to, and at 15 he's never been to a school (in London) where he was allowed to bring phones out other than with permission (e.g. asking a teacher for permission to call a parent, or if specific tasks were set - rarely - during lessons).

As I said in another comment, I'm more surprised Southwark had this many schools without restrictions, unless this has been exaggerated and many of them already had restrictions anyway and so no reason not to sign up to this...