I don't know how the sleep part plays into it, my oldest of course wants his phone with him at all times (he is required to put it away before bedtime).
I wonder if the school's ban encouraged parents to set similar restrictions?
What is the point of a cell phone ban when it’s just replaced with a more capable device?
I worked in that sector a long time ago and your hipshot is very far from my lived experience. If you want to educate yourself in what the large community of typically very dedicated IT workers in UK schools do to protect children from online harm, search for edugeek and take a look through their "filtering" related forum.
Back when I did that kind of work the web filtering tools were stil mostly commercial, e.g. Websense, and we maintained reasonably good control, but it was a cat and mouse effort. As just one example, for blocking games it wasn't enough just to block all game websites (new ones every day) and all "proxy" sites as they were known (new ones every hour), you'd also have to block things the kids brought in. At one point we wrote a script that scanned files to find all Excel documents with Flash games embedded within them via an activex component and nuke them.
This is all against the backdrop of maintaining an incredibly diverse IT setup where commercial software often had utterly appalling requirements but was mandated from on high. I now work in an organisation with >£1bn turnover and it probably has fewer licensed software packages than just one secondary school I used to work for.
What you realise over time is that the technical tools are not really the solution. Classroom teachers need to use their skills to keep children on task. Schools need to use their existing disciplinary protocols when children don't follow the agreed rules. IT staff need to provide a baseline level of safety to ensure that no child can accidentally or casually break the IT rules.
That’s what we moved to for one of our kids who couldn’t handle it. Except we have to control the access because the school won’t. It works.
Is it perfect? No. Google Docs is the worst due to embedding. But it beats whack-a-mole.
I’ve now had to do the management job of six teachers because they apparently don’t have the skill to deal with 30 kids with Swiss cheese restrictions. This, despite significant investments in software.
Some of the best sysadmins I've met are around academia because of the culture and they don't explode when being told their peers need to do better.
All I'll tell you is:
a) you're failing at stopping malicious internal actors you're simply fixing tick boxes
b) most school networks are a complete nightmare or worse laughable with next to no separation of resources (marking a drive as hidden on windows isn't secure)
c) maintaining an adult block isn't something to be proud of, there's services that do that for free at the perimeter they're called firewalls, deploy and forget, if that's not the case you are doing it wrong.
d) oh fudjing wow you wrote a script. This makes you a l33t sysadmin among your peers... Try taking to someone who deploys Linux at scale, this is Tuesday morning to them.
Stop blaming the teachers, and while we're at it, train them to not get fished by the smart kids...
Why would any school not have this policy? What possible reason is there to allow phones in the classroom? How is this even a debate?
People are dependent on smartphones to live day to day, in a way that they were not on simple mobile phones.
Don't use your phone in class and it won't get confiscated. What's the problem?
Having to walk home or wait to get picked up from school to be punished isn't crazy its called consequences which children need to be taught.
it would be OK in our case, but lots of kids live too far away to walk. Not everyone has a car.
it was also an example of how hard it is to do without it. My daughter is old enough not to need those rules and at this point (and at a sixth form college: a school that only takes kids 16+) I do not think such rules are needed.
For a more real example one parent told me of their low income family free travel to school that required a mobile app, but the school banned kids from even taking phones in.
No, these rules are needed like all rules in life. Don't just chop change and choose because 'you know better'. Society doesn't fundamentally function that way at your whym be you on top or the bottom. Obviously the real world bends to huge piles of cash but I doubt your kids are bribing the teachers here in this example...
So the low income family needs free travel via app. That's nonsense, no council in the UK is running something that increases the digital divide. They may offer it as a convenience via app but it's that. A CONVENIENCE. Especially where kids travel is involved, it's almost always a photographic travel id. Although there are a few that issue ones without photos.
Again if you break a rule you have your convenience taken away from you.