Head urges schools to block mobile web

SCHOOLS should block mobile internet connections if they want to keep children off smartphones, a leading headmistress has said.

Alice Phillips, headmistress of St Catherine’s, a £30,000-a-year girls’ boarding school in Surrey, hit out at “wretched” parents who buy their children unlimited data packages because they want to be their “best friend”.

She said she asked parents to buy wi-fi-only devices so that the school could control internet use.

“The wretched parents keep giving them 3G machines and won’t tell them to reduce the data,” she said.

“There is a bigger problem than all this. There is increasing social pressure on parents to be their children’s best friend.”

Ms Phillips, a former director of the Girls’ School Association, said that pupils were allowed to use their phones for a specific time slot in the evening, but during the day they were banned from social media.

“During the day they are in lock down [so] they cannot get on to these ghastly social media sites,” she said. “We would rather they had conversations face to face.”

Ms Phillips said her pupils were generally “extremely sensible” when it came to using their phones, and restricting the wi-fi was about “empowering” them.

“It is about not letting youngsters grow up too soon,” she said.