A Year of Yondr
Our Senior Deputy Head Pastoral, Ms Brass, reflects on how we are rethinking smartphones at South Hampstead.
A year ago, following parental feedback, we drafted Rethinking Smartphones – a document to help reduce the pester power of boundary-testing adolescents. Cognisant of the difficult position that parents are in when trying to constrain their children’s use of digital technology – feeling caught between wishing to set firm boundaries and not wishing to exclude their child from the social circle they inhabit – we wanted to support our families by setting out some basic principles and recommended practices.
To corroborate these practices, and keen to ensure that our pupils were genuinely free from the temptation of checking their phones during the school day, we also decided to roll out Yondr pouches at school. Since last September, all pupils in Years 7 to 11 have been placing their phones into locked pouches from the moment they arrive at school until the moment they leave. We wanted to demonstrate to the girls how seriously we take the business of keeping them not only safe but also healthy, reinforcing the message that spending eight hours without any hint of contact with their phone is not only manageable but beneficial.
From day one, the girls were good-humoured about the Yondr roll-out and have cheerfully cooperated with the new morning ritual, underlining the positive rather than punitive nature of the initiative. It’s been wonderful to hear that girls have noticed peers engaging more socially before registration, at break and at lunch – rather than finding hiding places to surreptitiously check their phones. Girls have also been effusive about how much more fun the coach journeys are to and from sports training and fixtures, now that phones are in pouches, as they rediscover the joys of chatting with each other and even making new friends rather than being heads down, looking at screens. Some say that their habits outside school have improved too, as they become more mindful and self-disciplined regarding their phone usage.
As a community, we are thrilled with the changes. Parents have reported feeling more empowered to have boundaries around phone ownership and use at home. Some younger pupils have brick phones or no phone at all. In many households, rules are now stricter about when phones can and can’t be accessed, particularly around bedtimes and family time. Reflecting on the shift over the past two and a half terms, it would be churlish not to acknowledge the challenges and pupils’ occasional begrudging reluctance. But, thanks to these sustained, collaborative efforts of the wider community, we are making progress. And seeing our girls better equipped to navigate the online world safely and successfully fills me with hope for a smarter, yonder future.