Headmaster's Blog
October 2024
You may remember that last year I wrote a blog about the downside of the digital revolution. That blog was released as the latest wave of anti-smart phone discourse was spreading through the summer. The movement has gained popularity very quickly. It was only a few months ago that I listened to a podcast where the South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas, was discussing his plan to ban smartphone use for under-14s in his state, and was optimistic that other state leaders would look to do the same in the months or years to follow. This conversation now seems to be taking place amongst many of the developed economies.
In recent weeks I have heard even more damning evidence to suggest that smartphone usage amongst children is detrimental to their Mental and Physical Health. The mental side of things is easy to recognise. At a recent lecture I attended by Dr. Rangan Chaterjee, I wrote down numerous statistics and musings on the damage that phone use was doing to our children; it is increasingly recognised as a genuine crisis. When we consider that 82% of 12 year olds own a smartphone with limitless connectivity, it is no surprise that children are accessing things we do not want them to see or read either accidentally or on purpose. The physical side of things may seem more abstract but looking at a smartphone an hour before bed can upset circadian rhythms. Poor sleep makes children more tired the following day and this upsets their mood, concentration, and energy levels. There are also reports of usage causing short-sightedness which has risen amongst children since the Covid pandemic. The impact is physical as well as cognitive. The average teenager receives 237 notifications a day on their phone – over a 12 hour day that is one notification every three minutes. No wonder they are tired and confused.
Running alongside this trend towards technological over reliance is my sense that parents are increasingly less willing or able to make decisions that are directly related to their own children. In an ever-more connected world, it is not just children who are swayed by peer influences – we can be too, and it is hard not to be influenced by the herd mentality. It is hard to hear that your child is the only one without a smartphone; that they are left out of social circles due to not being on Instagram and Snapchat. It is a brave parent, or at least one who is incredibly determined, to put the nagging to the back of their mind, especially when it can be constant and seem to become ever louder.
All of this is why I was very interested to learn about the Smartphone Free Childhood (SFC) movement that seeks to encourage parents to not allow their children smartphones until at least the end of Year 9 (you may recall that I broke at the end of Year 7 so I’m not squawking from an ivory tower!). So far 37,000 parents have signed up to this pledge, which affects 56,000 children. Their mission is simply stated on their website:
We either...
Give our children access to an adult product that opens the door to harmful content, addictive algorithms and the anxiety machine that is social media.
Or we...
Risk alienating them from their peers at a crucial stage of their development.
It’s a lose-lose; for parents, children and society. And we’re on a mission to fix it.
Our mission
We’re on mission to change the cultural norm that children are given smartphones, and challenge Big Tech’s ever-increasing colonisation of childhood. We’ll do it by:
· Growing the national conversation about the harms of smartphones for children.
· Empowering parents and schools to take collective action and create change at a local level.
· Putting pressure on government and tech companies to help us protect our children.
Just as we marvel at the fact cigarette companies used to market their products as healthy, people will look back on this era and ask why children weren’t better protected from Big Tech.
You can read more about the organisation at their website: https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/
I have deep concerns about smartphone usage by younger people, and I’m increasingly concerned about my own addiction. I know other parents feel the same.
Therefore, in the spirit of partnership, I am including below a link to a very quick and simple survey should you wish to take part. It will take two minutes and is completely anonymous. It will be a live link until 10pm on Friday 18th October and I will share the results after the break. There are only four questions for you to answer which will be determined by your response to question 2. They are as follows:
1. What is the year group of your eldest child at St Hugh’s?
2. Do they have their own smart phone?
3. If so, do you wish you had delayed them having it until they were older?
4. If so, would you have delayed giving them access if it were not for the fact that other children seem to own them?
5. If not, do you feel pressured to give them one, either due to their own demands or because other children appear to own them?
6. If not, would you be willing to commit to delaying giving a phone if other parents did the same?
These questions are not loaded. They are asked in the spirit of partnership that I often talk about and I have no idea what the results will be. We may be a community that values the smartphone and believes it to add to our children’s experience, or we may be worried about the impact but pressured to supply them to our children. This survey does not consider giving a child a smartphone so that you feel they are safe or contactable at all times; that can be achieved by giving them an old Nokia 3210 – this is specifically about smartphones.
After half-term I will simply share the statistics. It is then for individual parents to make their own decisions about supporting their children’s wellbeing. I hope this will be of interest to all readers.
September 2024
EXCELLENCE, WELLBEING, SUCCESS
If there are three words you will hear a lot this academic year, it will be these.
St Hugh’s has long prided itself on being an outstanding school. Our last inspection in 2022 only reinforced those credentials, while the success of the Year 8 children in the summer was the proof in the pudding.
Having had the opportunity to spend two years getting to know the school, one as Head-Elect and last year as my first in post, this summer was the perfect time to revisit our aims and values. I have said to many prospective parents over the last year that most schools will use the same phrases on their websites and in their marketing material. When stripping away the colours and crests, we are left with high frequency words. Parents choose Prep Schools very often because of how they ‘feel’ when they visit – not always based on what they say that they do for the children.
Ultimately, this is the best way of making decisions but it can belie the importance of Prep School education. Our job as Prep School educators is not only to create a warm and fuzzy feeling for children and parents; it is to prepare children for Senior School and life beyond. These are critical decisions as children will usually spend twice as long in their Prep School as they do in their Senior School. These formative years set the tone for what is to come. By the time the children leave Prep School, they have built the foundations of their personality and academic attitude, their moral code, and view of the world (a world that they are often engaging in via technology). In my view, Prep School education is the more important stage of school to get right, and to invest in. We all know the allegorical tale of the three little pigs; the foundations are critical.
During the summer, the Senior Leadership Team debated our aims and values, and numerous Governors have also joined this conversation. We have wanted to bring clarity to our aims so that you know our intention for your children, and so that all members of staff appreciate what we are aiming for, and children know what we are prioritising.
The values can be found on the website and I would encourage all parents to read through them. Our three central words are Excellence, Wellbeing, and Success.
We want to deliver Excellence in all areas for your children. Regardless of the discipline, area of learning, or experience, my drive is for us to be excellent and not to settle for anything less. If we are expecting the children to be excellent in attitude and application, we need to be too. There is no perfect school, but the strive for excellence is the constant evolution to get as near to that as we can, to be open to new ideas and to evaluate where we can improve. I will be pushing all staff to support each other in that pursuit. I have also used the word with all children this week in assembly. If children are to be the best they can be, they need to consider if they are being ‘excellent’ in their endeavours and their relationships. Not perfect, but excellent.
Wellbeing is a much-used word, but one that too often lacks definition. By wellbeing we are referring to your child’s academic and pastoral health which are of equal importance to us. The truth is that children who are happy, settled, fulfilled and who have direction are usually successful in what they are trying to achieve, and they are able to celebrate their successes without feeling that they could or should have done more. Academic Wellbeing means to be well prepared for future learning, to be willing to embrace new ideas and challenges, to continue growing and learning throughout life, and to have the personal resources at hand to cope with academic and vocational challenges. I am encouraging all staff to focus on these themes so that we are challenging the children but making sure that they are challenges that help them to swim faster and harder, without spluttering and sinking. Academic Wellbeing means pushing them to be their best, without having a detrimental impact on their Pastoral Wellbeing.
Pastoral Wellbeing is possibly easier to define. We want the children to be happy, both in the company that they keep (and able to adapt where personalities clash) and within themselves. Our children need to be self-assured without being arrogant; to be expectant of success without being entitled; to be confident in their convictions while being open to the thoughts and ideas of others; to be willing to take risks while having the ability to recognise danger. Pastoral Wellbeing is having good mental and physical health and knowing how to look after both.
It is the combination of the Academic and Pastoral Wellbeing that will lead to success at St Hugh’s, at Senior School destinations and, ultimately, in their lives ahead. That is success whether it is in examinations and assessments, a chosen career, financial aspirations, or friendships and familial relationships. It brings the opportunity for our children to be happy and content, which is all we as parents ever really want for our children.
St Hugh’s has long offered all of these things to children past and present so there is nothing new here. However, by bringing clarity to our aims and values and by focusing on these three words, we are providing focus on what our mission is – what St Hugh’s really stands for. If I was to offer a fourth word to this list it would be PARTNERSHIP. None of these goals are possible unless we are working together with the same values in mind. As such, we truly hope that these resonate and help to explain why you probably had that warm and fuzzy feeling when you first visited.
June 2024
A downside of the digital revolution
In recent months I have become acutely aware that I have made a serious mistake as a parent. I am equally aware that I am not alone in this; indeed, I spend a lot of my time reassuring parents that it is okay to be worried and anxious about how their children are getting on. The range of subjects is vast: friendships, academics, sport, happiness. The common theme is always worry, and always looking to make a child’s world as perfect as it can be which is completely understandable.
My slip into my bad parenting mistake has been a gradual one but it started early. I was keen to share a childhood love of Nintendo with my own children so we bought a Switch. We have spent the last decade travelling between our home in Wales and school so invested in Amazon fire tablets to make the journeys less argumentative for the children and less painful for us parents. Our daughter was given a mobile phone on her 12th birthday; a year earlier than planned but she seemed to be the last in her year group to have one and we broke. I bowed to the pressure of our son to buy a VR headset for a recent birthday; combined with some terrific Amazon bombardment of discount offers. Some parents reading this might nod in recognising this experience; others will be horrified. I can only note that all we can do as parents is make what we think are the best decisions at any given time.
Three years ago, we decided to sell our house on Anglesey and move back to the mainland. We bought a derelict smallholding which has since become a labour of love. On our first visit in the May 2021 sunshine, the children loved the idea of exploring the land with dogs at heel, building dens, and generally soaking in the fresh air. We all agreed that this was going to be an outdoor house. Fast-forward three years and this May half-term our children have barely been outside. It is easier to wake up and turn on the television or continue with Zelda than it is to don wellies and make a real bow and arrow in the woodland. How depressing that this is the default for many of today’s generation. Long gone are the days of football or climbing trees, which is all we ever really wanted to do as children; even after the Nintendo arrived in the late 1980s.
This situation may be familiar. As I write, calls for a government ban on smartphones for under-16s only grows. To my daughter’s disgust and fear, I have to admit that I am sympathetic to this idea, but implementation would be incredibly complicated.
The rise in mental health issues amongst young people is not solely the fault of the smartphone but it certainly has had an impact. I doubt there is a school leader in the country who has not seen an increase in anxiety issues and poor mental health. It would have to be one of the great coincidences of history if there is no correlation.
In February 2024, Ofcom, the online safety regulator, reported to the government that:
- 99% of children spend time online.
- nine in 10 children own a mobile phone by the time they reach the age of 11.
- three-quarters of social media users aged between eight and 17 have their own account or profile on at least one of the large platforms.
- despite most platforms having a minimum age of 13, six in 10 children aged 8 to 12 who use them are signed up with their own profile.
- almost three-quarters of teenagers between age 13 and 17 have encountered one or more potential harms online.
- three in five secondary school-aged children have been contacted online in a way that potentially made them feel uncomfortable.
- there is a “blurred boundary between the lives children lead online and the ‘real world’”.
In November 2023, NHS England reported that:·
- In 2023, 20.3% of 8 to 16 year olds probably had a mental disorder
- Among 8 to 16 year olds, rates of probable mental disorder were similar for boys and girls
- Children aged 11 to 16 years with a probable mental disorder were 5 times more than those unlikely to have a mental disorder to have been bullied in person (36.9% compared with 7.6%). They were also more likely to have been bullied online (10.8% compared with 2.6%).
- 2.6% of 11 to 16 year olds were identified with eating disorders, with rates 4 times higher in girls (4.3%) than boys (1.0%)
Children with smartphones have almost limitless access to pornography, self-harm, phobia promotion, and access to influencers and populists that have great ability to corrupt young minds. It is not within the business model of social media platforms to prevent this and legislation is woefully inadequate.
Children often have these phones with them 24/7. They sleep less well at night as often the phone is next to them, they use them on the way to school, while completing homework and prep, while watching television, often while eating with their family. There is no escape from the barrage of threat, abuse, and disinformation, even with parental attempts at curfew or child control features. Of course, escape is the wrong word as children are magnetised by these devices. They rely on them for social connectivity and there is clear evidence of children feeling left out if friends are constantly communicating on social media applications. Like a fly to a light-bulb, they do not always realise the underlying threat, or abuse they will face. Even when they do understand the threat, they can think they are mature enough to ignore it. Sadly, that is rarely the case.
Schools also have a responsibility for controlling usage. I must confess that 20 years ago as a classroom teacher leading a history trip to the Ypres Salient, I strongly argued against senior management to allow phones on the trip. The GCSE girls that we were taking all had phones and I could only see the safety advantages for their free time in Brugge, should they get lost or need to contact a teacher. Given the pace of change, that was a different largely app-less era with the biggest risk being a game of snake or losing the phone to a parent’s annoyance, but now I would never allow those phones to be taken. In my view, the risks would not outweigh the benefits.
Schools today need to give thought as to whether phones should be allowed in school at all. My eldest daughter catches the bus to school every day and for us as parents it is a great reassurance that she can contact us in the event of a possible breakdown or delay. When she first joined the school, we made sure she knew that the phone had to stay in her bag upon arrival and it was not to be seen during the day. Within a week she told us that although the official school policy was for no mobile phones, every day teachers would ask their students to take them out of pockets or bags to complete some research, work out a calculation, or take a photograph of a whiteboard or passage of text. It is no wonder that there is so much confusion amongst our young people. We talk about the dangers of these things but then give them the devices and expect them to use them sensibly. We, too, model bad behaviour.
More and more schools seem to be moving towards devices for children. I understand that they will use them in their working life and the UK cannot afford to get behind other countries with a digitally illiterate generation. However, I increasingly baulk against the idea of younger children using devices. We are evermore worried about the impact of micro-concussion in sport damaging our children’s brains. In rugby this is gradually leading to contact being introduced at an older age; surely we should be doing the same for devices. We can teach IT and coding in controlled environments but we do not need to teach children to rely on devices. Instead, we should be encouraging social interaction, literacy skills, question formation and research planning, argument structure and delivery, laterally thinking and creativity, exposure to the outdoors and fresh air. Success in life is not identified solely by economic measures, it is more identifiable by happiness, balance of work and leisure, strong relationships, and what we give back rather than what we consume. I am convinced that parents and schools need to focus less on endlessly seeking to fill gaps of time and increase productivity by digital means. We need to focus on quality of experience and generating self-understanding and reliance. Being a largely passive consumer of reels and social media feeds simply does not achieve that.
The great problem here is that over the past 20 years we have become completely reliant on the smartphone for banking, entertainment, news, commerce, and communication. We cannot simply expect children, parents, or schools to unilaterally make moves to roll back from the smartphone until it becomes age appropriate. Like many things in life, we only begin to miss the important elements of childhood when they have gone. If we don’t act now, future generations will not know they have gone.
I’m afraid this article only presents the problems, and not the solutions but there are embryonic ideas in here: parents making conscious decisions about their own children’s exposure rather than following the herd; school leaders being brave enough to stand by their convictions instead of following the latest digital trend; children being given continuing education about the advantages and disadvantages of the smartphone, which to be fair, I think schools already do very well.
However, it does need more, a lot more. It needs a societal shift and it is hard to see that coming without government intervention. A generation ago smoking was completely acceptable in public places and in the same timescale as the rise of the smartphone we now seem to be close to a generation that will be cigarette-free. We can change the direction of travel with the corruption of the young by smartphone usage but as a society we need to look in the mirror and make some hard decisions.