Phone-Free School: Two Weeks In

It’s now been two weeks since the College introduced the phone-free school day, providing an opportunity to reflect on how our students and staff have settled into this significant change.

Each morning, students submit their phones during Homeroom, where they're placed in individual Lock Boxes and kept in locked, CCTV-monitored storage for the day, before being returned during Afternoon Homeroom. Two weeks on, this routine is becoming second nature. While some students are still adjusting - reaching for a pocket that's now empty or remembering to hand phones in on time - the overwhelming majority have embraced the new procedure with maturity and good grace.

We want to acknowledge and thank our students for how they've approached this change. Adjusting to a new daily routine takes time, and it's entirely normal for habits to still be forming this early on. What has stood out to staff is not that the transition has been perfect, but that students have been genuinely willing to give it a go, following the process, supporting one another, and accepting the shift with a positive attitude.

Staff continue to notice the flow-on effects around the College. Anecdotally, the conversation among staff is that students seem genuinely more engaged with each other during breaks -talking, laughing, and interacting in ways that a phone in hand can quietly get in the way of. Relationships between students and teachers have benefited too, with phones no longer the source of everyday friction they once were in the classroom. And in lessons themselves, students generally seem more engaged in their learning. These are early signs, and we know two weeks is just the beginning, but they point in a very encouraging direction.

We're conscious this is still a process. There will be days that run more smoothly than others, and pockets of the routine that need fine-tuning as we go. That's expected, and we'll continue to work through it with patience and consistency. What hasn't wavered is our confidence in the change itself: a phone-free school day gives our students the chance to be more present with each other and more focused on their learning.

Thank you to our students for the way they've taken this on, and to our families for the support and encouragement you've given at home. It's making a real difference.