Proposed school phone ban is another pointless Tory policy

Your editorial on phones in schools (2 October) makes the point that most secondary schools already have clear policies to deal with this issue. The comprehensive school with 1,800 pupils that I last taught at allowed pupils to bring their phones in, but they had to be switched off and kept in bags during lessons. If a pupil tried to access their phone in class, the teacher would confiscate it and leave it at the school’s reception, where it could be collected only by a parent or guardian. This policy was very effective. Pupils could use their phones at break and lunchtime, and many did – to listen to music, play games and interact socially.

In my experience, most parents of secondary schoolchildren want them to carry phones. It means they can contact a parent if they are going to be late home, or want permission to go to a friend’s etc, while the parents are reassured by having direct access to their children before and after the school day.

Schools are quite capable of drawing up and enforcing their own rules on mobile phone use. Gillian Keegan should be attending to the problems schools cannot solve on their own – such as teacher retention, the doubling of pupil absenteeism in the last three years, and crumbling concrete. Keegan is our 10th education secretary in 10 years. Can you imagine a school that changed its headteacher every year? John Boaler Calne, Wiltshire

• Gillian Keegan’s plan to ban mobile phones from English schools (Report, 2 October) ignores the fact that researchers have found that phone bans have little or no effect on learning outcomes.

Keegan also ignores the importance of phones in enabling parents and children to maintain contact. As a grandparent of a 13-year-old who has several long-term medical problems, I know how essential it is for her to be able to reach her parents at any time. Wouldn’t it be great to have government ministers who seek independent and unbiased advice before scribbling their latest vote-catcher on the back of an envelope? Name and address supplied

• Perhaps MPs could take a lead and refrain from mobile phone use in the House of Commons. Jim Golcher

Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images Gillian Keegan stops for a selfie with a delegate during the Conservative party conference on 2October, the day she announced her mobile phone ban.