In my Blue Ribbon piece last week, I flagged that our School Leadership Team has been investigating the use of mobile phones by students at School. I highlighted the author Jonathan Haidt, who has been a significant voice in arguing for the removal of phones in schools. He provides a strong argument.

For 2025, the School’s Senior Leadership Team and the Middle Years Wellbeing Team have put forward a proposal to restrict our Years 7 to 9 students’ access to mobile phones during the school day. This restriction would come in the form of a Yondr pouch – a lockable signal-blocking pouch in which students place their phones at the start of the day. The pouch is then opened at an unlocking station at the end of the day. Students will hold onto their phone during the day by placing the pouch in their locker or bag, reducing the risk associated with handing the phone to a teacher and/or placing it in a central location.

Why are we considering restricting mobile phone use?

Educators and policymakers are increasingly embracing the shift towards phone-free schools. Research from Spain and the United Kingdom demonstrates that phone-free policies lead to significant improvements in educational outcomes. This echoes a rising trend in the United States, where schools are adopting measures from complete bans to more flexible policies. While the primary justification for these bans is to reduce distractions, the advantages extend beyond mitigating interruptions. Implementing a comprehensive campus-wide approach that removes phones for all students encourages:

• Deeper engagement with instructional content,
• Greater participation in classroom discussions
• Improved social interactions

With more educational systems recognising the benefits of such initiatives, phone-free schools are likely to become standard practice in the future.

In Australia, many state governments are putting phone bans into legislation. This recognises both the importance of ensuring students have the best environment to learn in, and also removing the need for school leaders to negotiate with their community on the best way forward. In Victorian public schools, students must have their phones switched off and securely stored during school hours. Wearable devices, tablets and other personal devices must have notifications turned off. Each school has its own policy on how this works in practice. All other States and Territories have similar expectations. Implementing this restriction, however, can be challenging, and relies on teachers and school leaders to have consistent and effective disciplinary structures in place to manage this expectation.

With almost 20% of our own Years 7 to 9 students on a device between 10.00pm and 6.00am, and 26% not getting eight hours of sleep most nights, we have approximately 1 in 5 students arriving at School tired and not functioning at their best.  Twenty-one percent are also not physically active for at least one hour per day.

Markers for anxiety and depression also indicate room for improvement. In our 2024 Resilience Survey, 32% of our current Years 7 to 9 students report feeling anxious (Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge, and not being able to stop or control worrying), and 18% have depressive feelings (feeling down, depressed, or hopeless, and little interest or pleasure in doing things).

Our Healthy Mind Score indicates that 62% of learners have a healthy mind (38% have feelings of depression, anxiety, or both), and their Ready to Learn Score indicates that 54% of learners are ready to learn (46% are anxious, disengaged, or both).

Whilst these statistics are not exclusively linked to mobile phone use, the significant rise in rates of depression and anxiety has a strong correlation with the introduction and wide-spread use of smart phones into society.

In an effort to reduce students’ engagement with their phones during the day, in consultation with the Education Leadership Team and the Middle Years Team, a proposal was put forward to work with Yondr, the company supplying the lockable mobile phone pouches for students.

Yondr helps to shield students from the negative effects of mobile phone use, including:

• anxiety and depression,
• social alienation
• behavioural issues
• cyber bullying
• lower academic performance

The intention for locking mobile phones away during the day is to:

• Increase engagement in the classroom and improve concentration
• Increase engagement between students at break times
• Increase engagement in co-curricular activities and physical activities
• Increase hours of sleep
• Improve student-teacher relationships by removing the behaviour management element of phone-use
• Reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression

While the School’s Leadership Team believe this mobile phone strategy will be positive for our students, we will be seeking feedback from staff, parents, and students prior to the introduction of Yondr pouches to ensure a smooth transition process for this change. We will be providing more information in the coming weeks.