Smartphones

I suppose it all began with the iPhone (note, there are other brands although probably not many that don’t rely on China for their build).

Whilst other schools up and down the country were banning mobiles, we embraced them; in fact we insisted upon them.

Every pupil had to bring a Smartphone to school and carry it with them at all times (the exception being PE, for obvious reasons – phones are the last thing on your mind as you slog around a race track in your t-shirt and joggers, with Mr McMaster screaming ‘faster, faster’).

The school gave mobiles with contracts to those pupils who could not afford them. Lovely new iPhones. We got a good deal from Apple.

Every year, at the start of term, we had an induction week for every year group, part of which taught them or reminded them how to use their Smartphones around school. Initially we recommended that pupils set up their own personal code or used a finger print to unlock the device. That became too clunky, especially in the dining hall when they had to use these to get served. Some forgot their codes and the phones could not cope with greasy fingerprints. The most advanced technology in western civilisation laid low by crisp eaters.

Two years ago we moved to facial recognition and we have not looked back.

Our school systems harvest personal data from the iPhones and allow pupils access to a whole range of services. In fact without facial recognition you can’t even get into the school and have to hover around the main gate until someone gives you a backup device.

It’s all totally seamless. Pupils don’t know what information is being gathered – who cares, as long as ‘thing’s work’. That’s the headteacher’s mantra, ‘Make things work.’

And it all works very well.

As pupils walk about school we can track their every move. If someone has been in the toilets longer than five minutes – let’s face it, school toilets, the bane of every teachers life – a member of support staff is dispatched to check on them. We are indeed a caring school.

If pupils cause problems – ‘being disruptive’ in school speak – video footage is automatically sent to parents and carers. We have no discipline issues.

We have no truancy. Why truant when your phone can track your every move around town.

We reduced the number of canteen staff. Pupils order their sandwiches and drinks before the lunch hour and these are delivered to their lockers.

We also saved on teacher duties around school at break time, as pupils are monitored via the school CCTV and their phones.

The benefits are enormous and lots of other schools are paying attention to our experiment.

Update: first day of the Easter holidays and I am in school with the rest of the senior leadership team. There has been a data hack and a ransom note received. Eva in Ekaterinburg has locked all of our systems. The headteacher is pacing her office floor shouting – raising her voice, she said later, not shouting – at the network staff to ‘Make things work’.