Education / US company behind phone-free concerts interested in helping Anderson High School
A US company behind phone-free concerts, schools and workplaces wants to help the Anderson High School (AHS) next.
Yondr has gained a name for helping massive music artists such as Madonna and Justin Timberlake perform at phone-free gigs, with audiences locking their devices in a pouch which they carry with them.
It has come under increasing demand with schools in both the USA and the UK, partnering with an ever-growing number to remove phones from the classroom.
And the company contacted Anderson High School head teacher Robin Calder last week as the school considers whether to stop pupils using devices through the day.
It comes after a petition was launched from concerned parents, urging the AHS to have phones put in a bag or safe box during lessons and breaks.
Yondr strategic advisor Lizzie Hacking said schools saw a “genuinely huge shift” in the behaviour and exam results of its pupils when they removed phones from pupil’s hands.
“Teachers saw what we were doing at concerts and said, ‘this could answer all the problems we’re seeing in the classroom’,” Hacking said.
“We’re seeing a huge movement now in the UK, we’ve got over two million students in our phone-free schools.
“Scotland has been a bit slow, but now we’re seeing a bit of a wave.”
Yondr was started in 2014 after founder Graham Dugoni grew frustrated with people filming the majority of a gig on their phones.
The company developed pouches which phones are stored in for the duration of an event, which have since been championed by musicians and comedians.
Devices are locked inside the pouch in the “phone-free zone”, and then opened by tapping an “unlocking base”.
Hacking herself has seen the impact they can have in an educational setting. She previously worked as a teacher in a school which embraced Yondr, and said it freed up teachers to be able to concentrate on their lessons.
She said they refer to schools they work with as “partners” – because it requires co-operation from everyone there.
“When we go in we have to make sure everyone is completely on board,” she said.
“We have to ask, ‘are the teachers trained and are they going to apply this really consistently?’”
“I think students really, really value fairness. They want to see it being applied across the board.”
How do pupils react to having their phones placed in a pouch they can carry around all day, but cannot access? Hacking says they grow to really like them.
“Psychologically students like being trusted to look after it themselves, rather than having to hand it over,” she said.
“They like their pouches, and know that they have it on them so at the end of the day they can unlock it themselves.”
When the petition was launched last week, some parents questioned what would happen if they needed to contact their child in an emergency – or if their child needed to speak to them about something that had happened at school that day.
But Hacking said some schools had said they preferred parents being told about an incident by them, rather than by their children.
“We’ve heard of times when a child has got in touch with their parents to say, ‘this person did this’, and they’ve marched up to the school in the middle of a lesson to confront a teacher who might know nothing about it.
“It makes it very, very messy sometimes.
“Whereas if you have a similar situation in a phone-free school, the student is going to have to go home and speak to their parents face-to-face about it, and that’s when we find they have a better conversation.”
She questioned the logic behind the argument behind parents needing to contact secondary-age pupils during the day.
“You don’t have parents contacting primary kids, and they are probably the most vulnerable,” Hacking said.
“If there’s any sort of emergency, then they contact the school office. That’s that way it’s been for years.”
Australia has recently banned children under the age of 16 from using social media, with last week’s petition pointing to the harm being caused to young people through their phones as one reason for suggesting a ban at the AHS.
The Scottish Government launched a campaign to support young people navigating social media, but Hacking said it went nowhere near far enough.
“It was disappointing they didn’t go further than they did,” she said.
And she said parents all over the UK were “crying out for an answer” about whether to allow their children to use mobile phones and social media.
“Kids are pressuring their parents to give them a phone, and it’s so difficult if someone in their class then gets one.
“Parents with children [aged] ten and above feel the pressure, and they don’t know what to do.”
The council’s children’s services director Samantha Flaws said last week they would be exploring the topic with parents, pupils and staff from the AHS in the coming weeks.
Headteachers have the responsibility on whether or not to ban mobile phones in schools, under Scottish Government guidance.
AHS headteacher Calder was approached for comment.
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