Students will use second phone to get around school pouch, says Cork principal

Students will drop second or “burner phones” into pouches which the government is funding to the tune of €9m and use other phones while in school, a Cork secondary school principal has warned.

Aaron Wolfe, principal at Coláiste Éamonn Rís, was speaking to The Echo following the publication of a study by Dublin City University’s anti-bullying centre in which it was suggested that the stricter the phone ban was, the more students looked for ways to get around it.

Last week, new national guidance was issued to schools on restricting mobile phone use.

Policy

Primary schools now require a policy to ban the use of, and access to, mobile phones during the school day, while secondary schools require a policy to restrict mobile phone use during the school day.

Funding of €9m has been allocated for schools to look at a range of storage storage solutions including lockable boxes, cubby holes or drop off and collection at the school office.

According to Mr Wolfe, however, students could very easily drop an old or “burner” phone into the pouch and use another phone.

“I wouldn’t think there’s a school in the country that didn’t tackle this problem 20 years ago.

“It does nothing to tackle the bullying issue, but I don’t think that’s the purpose of the mobile phone ban, because online bullying is something that happens when students go home.

“What it’s meant to fix is student attention, but schools already have procedures on banning mobile phones. What you have in many schools that have these phone pouches is that students drop a second phone, an old phone or burner phone, into it and they still have their phone on them.”

Robust procedures

He said that the robust procedures which schools have been using require students to turn off their phones when they come in their gates.

Mr Wolfe said that the schools would draw down the funding all the same but said that there were a million other things schools could be spending this money on to greater benefit.

“We’re in a terrible position at the moment. We have a teacher shortage, we have PME students wanting to be paid to be teacher trainees, we still don’t have the full restoration of the posts of responsibility and we have inadequate science funding,” he said.

He added that it was ironic that schools were being told to restrict phone use, while at the same time facing shortages of funding for ICT equipment.