To: The Secretary of State for Education, The Children’s Commissioners for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
The rapid implementation of phone pouches by schools across the UK is taking place without proper consideration of the drawbacks or alternatives. As outlined in the eight points below, rather than supporting safeguarding and child wellbeing, phone pouches work in the opposite direction. An urgent pause and review of this unprecedented policy is required.
Pouch systems actively encourage parents of Year 6 children (10 or 11 years old) to buy their child a smartphone. For example, schools send equipment lists to new parents that, alongside items such as PE kit and calculators, also list pouches. What is the pouch for, if not for a smartphone? Parents are receiving a clear steer from their new school: It is expected that your child will own and carry a smartphone.
This means that the current ‘hinge point’, the transition from primary to secondary, when the majority of children become smartphone owners and enter a world of harm, is further embedded. This, despite growing evidence that incoming Year 7 parents do not want to buy their child a smartphone and want support from their child’s new secondary school to help them to delay. However, these views, of the next generation of secondary school parents, are not being heard and, instead, smartphone ownership is explicitly and implicitly encouraged.
Storing smartphones is an unprecedented policy whereby schools take in something harmful and return it at the end of the day. An array of items are banned from school premises (vapes, solvents, weapons, pornographic magazines etc). Schools do not have systems to collect such items from pupils, to then return them after the last lesson of the day, for the school gates and the journey home.
The novelty of phone pouches as school policy means that more questioning is required. Part of this is to interrogate the principle that it is a positive change to move to a culture that says ‘we take in something from pupils (that we know is harming them) and then give it back’, to watch our young people unpouch and light up at the school gate, the school bus, the after school club.
Pouches are expensive. The price point appears to be around £18 per pouch. The recent 9 million Euro deal signed with the Irish government is eyewatering. Why spend sums such as this when schools could more simply opt for a ‘brick only’ policy?
In addition, this is effectively a permanent privatisation and outsourcing of school behaviour management systems. Using Ireland’s figures, the initial cost to pouch all UK state schools is approximately £63.52 million and the annual cost is £12.6 million.* For how long do we envisage phone pouch systems remaining in UK schools? For pouch companies, the answer is no doubt ‘perpetuity’. That is quite a cost that schools are committing to. Where is the scrutiny?
Storage solutions promote the idea that schools cannot manage the problem of smartphones themselves, that they require external help and support. The reality is, schools prohibit items all the time, every day, as mentioned in point 2. From vapes to Tipp-Ex, schools are well versed in adding items to the list of things that cannot be brought onto the premises and then enforcing this. As shown by the recent announcement by West London Free School to prohibit smartphones from the premises, with leadership and a proper system in place, it is well within the power of schools to manage. Storage solutions, conversely, complicate matters and disempower schools.
It should also be noted that many items banned by schools (gambling, pornography, violent videos, video cameras) are available on a smartphone, and more besides. It is therefore entirely consistent for schools to not allow them on premises, to go 'brickphone only', as Archer Academy, for example, did back in 2015, and many more schools are now doing in 2026.
Storage systems require more management than simple prohibition, not less. As explained above, it is straightforward for schools to add smartphones to the list of prohibited items, whereas storage systems require new infrastructure, frequent checks on pupils, new kit being ordered and so on. This is not being properly considered, the true costs of such systems to schools, over and above the expense outlined in point 3.
Storage systems lock schools into commercial agreements and norms that they will find hard to exit. After spending significant time and resources convincing parents of the need to go in a certain direction, of consulting and investing significant political capital with staff and other stakeholders, senior school leaders are unlikely to be receptive to a message that says ‘you were well intentioned but you got it wrong’.
This means that our preferred option, for schools to become ‘brickphone only’ environments, is being shut off to many schools, just at the moment when public sentiment and school leaders are shifting to support it.
Storage systems do not protect children from the harm done to them, individually and collectively, by smartphones. Pupils in their care will still be shown beheading videos on the school bus and nude images of their peers at the school gates, for example. As is well documented, the vast majority of harms, from cyberbullying to loss of sleep, are taking place outside of school hours and often having repercussions during the school day.
The benefits that some schools report from pouches demonstrate that schools should not be allowing smartphones on premises. We acknowledge that pouches make it harder (though far from impossible!) for pupils to access harmful, distracting products during the school day. But the very arguments for doing so are exactly the arguments that support going ‘brickphone’ only. If we believe a product is so damaging, it requires an entirely novel and expensive system, we can also believe that a better option is to simply not allow the product on premises.
In addition, many schools using pouches have reported problems, such as pupils bringing in magnets, using ‘dummy phones’, and breaking the pouch mechanism. Phone pouches are a solution to an adult problem, to improve experiences at comedy shows and music events. They are not the solution for UK schools.
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All of this is made more troubling by the sudden speed of take up in recent months, fuelled by the mistaken belief that ‘not seen or heard policies’ are not compliant with Ofsted. Whilst it is true that statements have been made by politicians that indicate ‘not seen or heard’ policies are unwelcome, it is not true that they fail to meet statutory requirements for schools in September 2026, as has been mistakenly reported.
Schools have time to get this right but are being pushed into a knee jerk response, rather than properly considering alternatives, such as more strongly enforcing ‘not seen or heard’ or, our much preferred method, moving to become ‘brickphone only’ environments, which is game changing for schools, pupils and parents.
With this week’s announcement that the government will age restrict social media to 16, the case for schools to do so is greater than ever. Brickphones, such as a Nokia 105, allow for practical communication to and from school but with none of the distractions or harms. Schools simply provide a list of phones deemed suitable, which may include some of the new brickphones coming to market that provide parents with even more control.
Smartphones are the devices by which children access social media, and social media access them. They are a portal to a world of harm, from sextortion to suicide ideation to extermist material. As outlined above, we believe that pouches are not the answer and, at the very least, their roll out should be paused. This would allow a proper discussion and debate. It might be, following this, that phone pouches win the day. We think this unlikely. We believe that the arguments above are persuasive and, once considered, will support schools to move away from choosing pouches, to take a different path, one that will lead to the one of the biggest improvements in safeguarding and child wellbeing in history.
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*The Irish government €9 million pouch deal, including an estimated €1.7 million a year to replace pouches. This source contains the figure of €20 per pupil. kildare-nationalist.ie/news/department-estimates-1...
There were 3,671,427 state funded secondary school pupils in the UK in 2024/25. €20 per pupil gives an initial cost of €73,428,540 and an annual fee of €14,685,708, which converts to £63.53 million and £12.6 million at today’s exchange rate.