Walk into Brannel School in the morning and you will see teenagers locking away their phones – each device slips into a special pouch that locks until the end of the day.
The phones stay with the pupils, but they are out of reach.
Brannel, near St Austell, Cornwall, is among a number of schools in the South West that are clamping down on phones due to the distractions they create.
Head teacher Tristan Muller-Forster said the system tackled what he called “mobile fatigue”.
He said: “If it’s accessible in their pocket they just want to reach for it, they don’t actually know why, so the beauty of our process here is that those mobile phones are still in their possession, but they are locked away.”
The impact is clear – one pupil said: “None of our lessons are getting interrupted by the teachers saying put your phone away.
“It’s very good so then people can focus on their learning.”
Another added: “Also like anxiety or stress, because then you don’t have to worry about loads of things. Students get to socialise more with each other at break time and lunch.”
At Chulmleigh College in Devon, the rules are even tougher. Phones can be brought in, but they cannot be seen or heard. Break the rule and you risk losing your phone for weeks.
One pupil said: “If you get caught on your phone, you get detention and it gets confiscated. And then if you do it again, it kind of gets confiscated for longer.
Another added: “It’s disrupting your learning and then it’s distracting others as well.”
Head teacher Neil Payne believes the policy drives success.
He said: “We know that mobile telephones are distracting for young people, and adults for that matter, so to achieve well and to do well and to make every lesson count, we need to make sure that children are focused.”
