A move to ban cellphones at Otago Boys' High School has been welcomed by students and their families, with only 20 confiscated in the first week, school rector Richard Hall says.
From this year, students at the school are not allowed to use their cellphones during break time. Hall told Checkpoint it was something he had considered for the past year and a half, but two things happened at the end of last year which prompted him to make the decision.
A survey showed students were on devices for about five to five and a half hours outside of school hours, and they use them for about four hours while at school, so a total of about nine hours a day.
"And then the second thing was just walking around the playground at interval and lunchtime and just seeing groups of boys sitting down staring at a phone and not talking to each other, quite frankly."
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Sometimes groups of 25 boys would sit together, ignoring each other, staring into their phones, Hall said.
"And then the reality was in one of the sections on relationships [in the survey] 16 percent of our boys admitted they saw their friends less in person and talk to them more online. And those things were quite telling, alongside obviously other issues related to bullying, cyber bullying, and those sorts of things which every school has."
The time spent on their phones was time they could be interacting and playing sport, Hall said.
He was struck by survey findings which showed about 80 percent of the school's students participated in physical activity, but only 25 percent were meeting national guidelines of doing 60 minutes or more of moderate to physical activity each day.
"I'm hoping that our students will engage productively physically with each other and you know, play more sport, play more games, just communicate with each other, have better stronger relationships, be able to look each other in the eye and speak. Read more - I think that's something that's really we're looking forward to here."
Parent have been overwhelmingly supportive of the move, Hall said.
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But how do the boys feel about not being able to use their phones?
"Well, I think our head prefect summed it up really well in a discussion I had with him the other day. He said they don't like it, but deep down they know it's the right thing to do."
Some, however, still need reminding of the rules and about 20 phones have had to be confiscated in the first week.
If a student is caught using their phone, Hall will confiscate it till the end of that day. If they are caught again, he'll confiscate it until the end of the week, and if they are caught a third time, then he will call a meeting with their parents.
No one so far has been deliberately defiant, he said.
"...A few have just probably had them on them when they shouldn't have and have only just realised, but they've all been very much accepting of it. We haven't had any issues with confiscating a boy's phone. It's been very much accepted and done graciously by the boys and the staff."