Mobile Phones and Headphones

September 20th 2018

Dear Parents

Thank you all for your support preparing your children and our students for the start of the school year, which is now well and truly underway.

There has been much publicity around schools’ concerns that the use of mobile phones in school prevents students from focusing on their studies and that they may be misused to cause or contribute to socially stressful situations.

Some schools have introduced or are moving towards the introduction of outright bans on mobile phones in school.

We would like to remind parents and students that mobile phones should be turned off and in the bottoms of bags during Tutor time and lessons.

Students must not use mobile phones before break or lunch when use will be permitted.

This means that mobile phones should remain in students’ bags when moving between lessons.

Students must not wear or carry headphones or ear pods in school at any time.

Of course, there may be the odd occasion where teachers ask students to use their phones for research purposes in a lesson and then students should use the phone only for the purpose outlined and put away immediately afterwards.

As has always been the case, we may confiscate a student’s phone where they disregard our rules and invite parents to attend school to retrieve it at a convenient time.

During this school year we will be focusing strongly on student attendance. Every student should be aiming for 100%, except in the most exceptional circumstances. Less than 98% attendance is a serious cause for concern and identified by educational research as disruptive to students’ learning.

We will also be focusing much more closely on the completion of all Homework by all students to their best personal standard as we believe this is a vital key to student learning and progress.

Once again, thank you for all your support as we get ‘stuck into’ this school year.

Yours sincerely

Charles Joseph

Senior Vice Principal