Dorie School has joined a growing list of schools nationwide making mobile phones off limits for pupils during school time in an effort to keep pupils safe.
Phones cause a distraction, limit face to face communication and can lead to social media addiction and cyberbullying.
Dorie School principal Anthony Dorreen said since the start of the year staff had noticed more pupils, mostly in Year 5 to 8, bringing mobile phones to school for whatever reason.
While the school did not have an issue with the children having phones at school, it was the texting, taking photographs and making calls that was causing concern.
The phones, as of last week, are now handed in at the beginning of the day and locked away until after school.
Mr Dorreen said the new policy had drawn positive response from parents and the school community.
Ashburton Intermediate School have had a similar policy for at least seven or eight years.
Students at school hand their phones in at the beginning of day, and collect at the end.
Principal Brent Grey understood it initially started to prevent phone theft, but now it was about students accessing social media.
"They’ve got access to technology within the classroom, they don’t need them. Interesting enough there have been a few secondary schools in Christchurch ban them."
He said students caught using phones during school time have letter’s sent home, and the phones have to be collected by parents.
And, with the onus on the students to hand them in, if they get stolen, the consequence of their inaction falls on them.
Mid Canterbury Principals Association president Tim Kuipers, of Ashburton Christian School, said the Ministry of Education gave general advice to schools on how to manage digital devices, but each school had to develop their own policies based on their own situation.
"Technology is often distracting and can hinder deeper thinking, which is essential to good learning."
"(At Ashburton Christian School) we also have phones handed in and have done so for some time.
"Our secondary pupils may now use theirs as long as they install a Family Zone app.
"This app has the power, for example, to block social media between 9:00am and 3:00pm or make everything work except the calculator."
He said as students showed more personal responsibility those limitations were reduced.
Craighead Diocesan School, in South Canterbury, made news headlines last week after they introduced the policy and reported almost instant results. Principal Lindy Graham, speaking to The Courier, said there was a noticeable increase in face-to-face communication.
"A teacher walked into the drama room last week and the students were talking to each other instead of looking into their phones," she said.
The school had decided it was time to take a firmer line on cellphone use with "a lot of research emerging about the impact of cellphones on young people – lack of sleep, social isolation, addiction to social media, fear of missing out, cyberbullying to name a few."
Cellphone use was also banned at school events outside the usual school hours such as chapel services and prizegivings.
