Charging student phones

[Rob_D]

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but do you guys let students charge their phones in your/the ICT office?

 

We used to lend the occasional charging cable out, but it got a bit ridiculous and the cables started not coming back, so we changed our policy to, they could leave the phone on charge in the ICTNS office (turned off). But now it's getting stupid again and I think we should stop.

But this has to go through the head because the school is worried parents will kick off if we just start saying no (and because everything has to go through the head), so now i need a quick straw pole of how many other schools charge phones for students.

Edited May 14, 2025 by Rob_D

[NegativeKillDeath]

Students aren't allowed their phones out/on in school so why would they need to charge them up?

 

[ThomL]

17 minutes ago, NegativeKillDeath said:

Students aren't allowed their phones out/on in school so why would they need to charge them up?

 

Same stance from SLT here.

[Chockster]

We do the occasional charge for students on request. It's mostly because their travel passes are all on their phones these days.

[PotNoodleTech]

Personal phone  = personal responsibility to charge it.

 

Also Safeguarding mandates you shouldn't be touching looking at or in any way handling a pupil phone.

[CHiLL]

It's a hard no here, with the only exception being from a pastoral/SLT request.

[IRL]

Students aren't allowed phones here either usually, but we have a couple of diabetics and a few students that get picked up by taxis so I'll charge their phones if needed. They have to be switched off by them in front of us before we'll charge it though as there was an issue with a student using a recording app on their phone when it was confiscated.

[Jamie2581]

We used to charge the students phones but then decided it was time to place 2 charging lockers around the school. This took a while for them to adapt but they now bring their own chargers for the lockable units.

[dhicks]

44 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

do you guys let students charge their phones in your/the ICT office?

 

Phones are handled by the front desk - senior school pupils are allowed to bring phones to school, they hand them in at the front desk on arrival and pick them up on the way out. When we had a separate senior school building we had a room holding all the Chromebook chargers, pupils could swap their phone for a school Chromebook and leave it on charge (thank goodness for USB-C chargers!). Does need managing (you wind up with a lot of pupils milling around fiddling with cables), and you're best off having solid metal charging units in case of charging issues (overheating / fire) with devices.

[psydii]

as per @NegativeKillDeath ...and yet also @Chockster.  Its a very rare occurrence where the need to get their phone working outweighs the risk of having their phone confiscated *and* the pastoral office is closed *and* the school office isn't staffed by someone sympathetic to their plight. 

[drutt]

No, if a student brought their phone in and asked it would be reported to their head of year and likely confiscated / sanctioned.

[Chris_Cook]

As others, emergencies only, and only if we have the right cable.

 

Chromebooks on the other hand we do a lot of. 

 

We don't lend out chargers as they don't come back.

 

6th formers have 2 charging lockers with pin codes on each bay. Not sure how much it gets used. Its intended for laptops or chromebooks though.

[DrBeaker]

Problem is this is a minefield:

 

Liability of something happening to the devices - dodgy lead, charger, it blows up etc.

Safeguarding issues right off the bat.

Wider societal issues currently of they legitimately might not be able to / not allowed to charge it at home by their family due to the cost of electric (that was an eye-opener) 

 

IMO FWIT IT simply aren't trained to deal with these issues, which means we'll get it wrong. and this should be down to Pastoral/SLT which is why I guess ours look the other way for this and let them charge them in IT suites etc.

Edited May 14, 2025 by DrBeaker

[pete]

It depends:

 

Y12 and Y13?  Yes - they're allowed phones/tablets/laptops in school (provided they don't use them in corridors or in front of Y7-11) - but their names goes on the whiteboard and we disable their accounts if they're not returned in a timely manner.  We reserve the right to say "Nope, you never return it on time".

 

Y7 to Y11?  Unless that's your Sports Studies video on there and the deadline's today/tomorrow, put it away or you'll lose it until the end of the day.

 

To be fair to the sixth formers, they're much better than staff at returning borrowed kit.

[synaesthesia]

Almost a straight no, even with a USB straight into mains, if something goes wrong it can't come back to us.

However it depends - if it's a student with a medical monitoring device piggybacking to their phone, absolutely.

[ITGuyNW]

We have a charging station in our pastoral office. If they need to charge it for a safeguarding reason, then they go there. It's not allowed anywhere else.

[Oaktech]

6th form have a a few stations - each station has 4 usb and 2 wireless pads in common/dining room areas, but the rest of the secondary school is an absolute no. We don't even like to charge staff phones!

 

Primary schools - one of them has a 10 bay wireless charging locker in the office that was paid for by the PTFA and the staff ask the child if they need a charge when they hand the phone it before they come in the door. The other primary is an absolute no - phones are handed in to a designated member of staff in a security bag, brought to the office and locked away.  

[Arbalest]

We are having this issue at the moment, we are considering deploying these on the campus's - https://www.master-charge.co.uk/buy/mastercharge-tap-go-power-bank-charging-station-powerbank-vending-machine/