Most high schools in a London borough are banning smartphones. A principal explains how the plan took shape.

Headteachers made the announcement shortly after a government report found that between 2020 and 2022, there was a 52% rise in children’s screen time, and almost a quarter of young people used their smartphones in a way that’s consistent with addiction.

Mike Baxter, the principal of the City of London Academy, Southwark, led the initiative with Matt Jones, the executive principal of Ark Globe Academy, to collaborate with local schools to cut smartphone use.

Power in numbers

For Baxter, the most effective way to get rid of smartphones is by acting with other schools.

“Unless you’re working collectively, you become the standout school, and you become the school that parents may not want to go to,” he said, explaining that for many people, a ban isn’t an attractive idea because they want their children to have these devices.

He said one of his top reasons for driving the initiative is to help young people become socially rounded and more concerned with how they’re interacting with people in the real world, as opposed to on their smartphones.

Baxter said the schools that he works in are generally in deprived areas.

“Those are the communities that need every chance possible to get the best possible exam results, to network and to get the work experience they need,” he said, “and hours and hours spent on TikTok and Instagram doesn’t provide them with that holistic education.”

Children of lower socio-economic means are more negatively affected by being reliant on their smartphones, said Baxter. This is because they may need to network and socialize more than their peers who have family connections to help them secure career opportunities when the time comes, he added.

He felt students needed to be taught that the world is about human interaction so they can become adults with resilience in the workplace.

Baxter’s passion also comes from being a dad, who doesn’t want to feel the need to buy a smartphone when his child turns 10 or 11 just because that’s what everyone else does.

Parents have to come to the school to collect confiscated smartphones

The district’s ban varies between schools, but in Baxter’s, every phone — smartphone or not — needs to be put into a pouch and turned off.

If a teacher ever does see a phone, they will always take it, regardless of context, as Baxter said there is no reason for a pupil to have their phone with them unless they plan on using it.

When the phone is a so-called “brick” or “dumb” phone, it’s confiscated for one week and then returned to the student. For smartphones, parents have to come to collect it after school, which Baxter said they would be made aware of.

It’s not all on schools

However, the burden shouldn’t only fall on schools. Baxter says parents should refrain from buying their younger children smartphones altogether.

He said moms and dads have been instrumental in setting up group chats with like-minded parents and guardians eager to avoid buying these devices for kids.

In February, Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough set up a WhatsApp group with this exact intention. Within 24 hours thousands wanted to join. The two suggested people set up local groups, and soon, there were over 60 Smartphone Free Childhood WhatsApp groups, sparking a national campaign.

Since they wouldn’t be using their phones during school breaks and at other points, the ban meant pupils would get two to three hours extra each day to connect with the world around them. But he was less sure about what happens when the students get home.

Baxter’s school will ask parents to buy more simplistic phones. He doesn’t agree with waiting for the government to address the issue of children spending too much time on their phones.

“Human beings have got a huge amount of agency to change the world around them. And that’s what schools are doing, that’s what parents are doing,” he said.