Teachers claim there is a ‘notable increase in the concentration they are seeing in class’ since the restrictions were introduced
A secondary school which banned phones says it has facilitated “students having a childhood” and seen a “notable increase in the concentration” of students. Pupils at The Netherhall School in Cambridge have been unable to use their mobile phones at school since December last year following a trial with a group of students.
Netherhall’s 1,000 main school pupils queue up each morning to put their phones into lockable pouches and can’t access them until the school day has finished. Principal Chris Tooley, 58, said that since the restriction was introduced, every child enters school being greeted in the morning and entertaining conversations creating a “moment of warmth, not a moment of scrutiny”.
The school invested £15,000 into the pouches which cost £15 each when bought in bulk or £25 individually. Principal Tooley, said the money was “100 per cent” worth it, adding teachers say there’s a “notable increase in the concentration they are seeing in class” and that there was “a significant uptick in participation in clubs and sporting activities.”
“We are facilitating students having a childhood, and being physically active, and learning the art of conversation – rather than the art of texting,” he added. This ban was introduced prior to the UK government’s announcement to ban social media for children under 16, with the rules scheduled to take effect in spring 2027.
Principal Tooley said that an opportunity had risen for the school to implement the changes in an “economically viable way” to “protect children”. He said that prior to the changes, the school asked students to have their phones switched off and out of sight during school hours but he said it was “impossible to police”.
”We were very conscious of most of the behavioural incidents we had, the breakdown in relationships were linked to social media. So the opportunity of protecting students from that was a no-brainer really to be able to put that in place when we could.”
Explaining what convinced the school to implement these changes, Principal Tooley, said: “One of the students who took part in the trial, they came in the morning and put their phone in the pouch. At the end of the day, we asked them to take it out of the pouch with us there.
“They did that, and of course, what happened is as soon as it connected to the mobile network, you had this arrival of notifications that otherwise would have arrived during the school day, and would have been that background ticking of knowing there’s that little red button that’s appeared, that tells you there’s a notification. There were 1,285 notifications that had arrived at this child’s phone during the school day, plus 22 missed calls.”
The 58-year-old asked the student whether they were planning to read through all the notifications, to which they reportedly replied “no, because most of it’s rubbish anyway”. The principal said that was a “really compelling argument” to go forward with the phone ban.
In another instance, he said a student evidenced how much screen time had been used between 3pm (after school) and the following morning at 8.30am. According to Principal Tooley, the student’s screen usage reached 12.5 hours over the 17.5 hour period as the student had been ‘doom scrolling’ on social media until the early hours of the morning.
The principal for the Cambridge school said “we are creating a sanctuary, we’re not creating a prison”, adding “we’re giving freedom, we’re not putting you in captivity”. The school offers various social, sporting and artistic activities to create a “proper childhood”.
The children take the pouches home with them and the school encourages parents to lock the phone back in the pouch at night time to prevent children losing out on sleep. “At the moment, it’s not what time does your child go to bed? It is, what time does the phone go to bed?”
Children who try to get around the rules sit through a research project explaining the dangers of social media to help them understand the reasoning behind the ban.
Principal Tooley added: “They can come into school and know nobody’s going to be filming them, nobody’s going to be taking a photograph of them, nobody’s going to be sending them unpleasant texts.
“They can be safe when they enter the school gates, that they’re in a zone whereby those sorts of things aren’t going to be happening, they’re not going to be seeing an image themselves later in the evening in the classroom. taken by somebody else there.”
In total, the school has 1,300 pupils including sixth form students but the rules do not apply to those students.

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