Lunchtimes at St Raphaela’s Secondary School in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, have changed.
The quiet huddling over phones has been replaced by the din of chatter and laughter in the school corridors. Students report less “drama” and more time to chat. Despite initial anger at the move, many are less reliant on their phones and say that it has broken the spell of constant checking for updates and notifications.
When phone pouches were first introduced at St Raphaela’s in 2023, Lara Dardis, now a fifth-year student, was not happy.
“I was going into fourth year and there would be a lot of trips. I was also used to having my phone in school and going on it at lunchtime,” says Dardis. “I wasn’t too happy about it, but throughout the year, it definitely grew on me.”
Dardis noticed the impact both around classwork and during recreational time. “You can really tell the difference now. I’m concentrating way more in school and my grades have gone up,” says Dardis. “Lunchtime is a lot better, because you’re talking to your friends more, instead of just going on your phone.
“There’s no social media impacting things, and most of the drama comes from social media. Now there’s not much drama, but there’s still lots to talk about.”
Principal Eileen O’Donnell decided to do something about phones after watching how lunchtime had changed.
“The place was just so quiet. There was not an awful lot of conversation going on,” says O’Donnell, “I think at lunch and break the phones became a little bit of a crutch.”
She feels the impact of restrictions during the Covid pandemic deepened students’ relationships with their phones.
“Students found socialisation after Covid quite difficult, and if you didn’t feel you could make that move and chat to somebody or open a conversation, you could busy yourself on your phone and not look awkward or out of place.”
O’Donnell also says that while the phones were not allowed in the classroom, students could bring them to school and, at times, were permitted to use them for certain lessons.
“It became obvious that that was a distraction, because there were messages coming in and there were people scrolling,” says O’Donnell.
The impact of phones on student wellbeing, however, concerned O’Donnell most of all.
“It certainly wasn’t a problem in class, we could have handled that,” she says. “It was more looking at the wellbeing of the students and how this device was now managing their lives for them – it kept them always watching the phone and watching what was happening.”
Following consultation with the board of management, parents and students, lockable phone pouches were introduced to the school.
Phone pouches have since become a political football after Minister for Education Norma Foley announced €9 million in funding for them across all second-level schools. The move sparked loud criticism from teachers’ unions and Opposition parties about misplaced spending priorities.
Initially, the pouches were something of a novelty.
“It’s a simple piece of equipment, and I knew it would be relatively easy to implement and to monitor,” says O’Donnell. “There was bit of a financial outlay for the first year, but then, the pouches are reusable.”
While a small number of parents voiced concerns about restricting use of the phones, the majority of parents supported the introduction of the pouches.
Niamh Moore, who has a daughter in fourth year at St Raphaela’s, says she is delighted, as she feels students’ reliance on social media grew during the Covid lockdowns.
‘It has massively changed things. The corridors are noisy at break times and teachers on duty now see students chatting, with much more laughter’
— Eileen O’Donnell, St Raphaela’s Secondary School, Stillorgan
The introduction of the pouches has, she says, given students time away from the impact social media can have on their wellbeing. “At least you know that there’s a few hours in the day where they just don’t have any of that noise going on for them,” says Moore.
The absence of phones during break times has had a notable impact on social interactions. “There doesn’t seem to be the anxiety and arguments between the groups, and now it feels more normal,” says Moore.
The pouches were supplied by Yondr, a company based in California. They were first invented for concert audiences, but have since grown into a multimillion dollar business in the education world.
[ Phone pouch scheme will cost €2m every year as well as €9m outlay, McDonald saysOpens in new window ]
“The main bulk of our work now is in phone-free education and creating phone-free schools and learning environments for students,” says Sarah Leader, Yondr’s director of public affairs.
Ireland isn’t alone in struggling with how to control phone usage in schools.
“The problem with phones in schools is universal, globally speaking – this is a huge topic of conversation,” says Leader. “We’re in conversation with many different politicians across the world on this topic. We’re now working across 38 countries.”
This type of approach, however, has been criticised in some quarters for being needlessly expensive or easy to bypass with the use of “burner” phones or through tampering with the pouches. Opposition parties roundly criticised Ms Foley’s €9 million initiative.
O’Donnell feels the Minister’s mistake was to introduce a blanket approach to curtailing mobile phone use.
“Every school is different, and every context is different,” says O’Donnell. “I think she needed to put more trust in principals.”
Some schools, she says, do not have enough laptops or tablets for student use during class, and so may be reliant at times on phones for access to digital platforms.
O’Donnell would like to see access to funds from the information and communications technology (ICT) grant being the priority. “The ICT grant that we’re supposed to get year-on-year didn’t materialise at all in 2023,” says O’Donnell “That’s major for schools, because you’re committed to your ongoing services and licensing.”
She remains, however, an enthusiastic supporter of lockable pouches at her school given the transformation of many aspects of life there.
“It has massively changed things,” says O’Donnell. “The corridors are noisy at break times and teachers on duty now see students chatting, with much more laughter.”
For students and families, meanwhile, there are signs that some of the benefits have extended into the home environment.
“At home, I turn my phone off and I put it on another side of the room, then I just forget about it for an hour and get my homework done,” says Dardis.
“It’s made my phone feel like more like a reward. I’m also not even using it as much at home any more – now I watch shows with my mom and my screen time has gone down so much.”
Students’ screentime
A survey in 2023 of more than 1,000 school students conducted by Studyclix reported their thoughts on the impact of phones and screentime on their wellbeing and schoolwork. It found:
83 per cent of students worry they use their phones too much
38 per cent of students use smartphones for four-plus hours a day, with 16 per cent using them for six-plus hours
54 per cent of students say short-form content from video apps such as TikTok and other platforms such as Instagram have seriously impacted on their concentration or ability to study
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