Why phone pouches are on the rise in schools

How much would you commit from your school budget to remove the “single biggest cause of problems and tensions” in your setting?

For Stephen Drew, headteacher of Stewards Academy, a 1,000-student secondary in Essex, a £20,000 initial cost, plus approximately £3,000 a year from then on, is “money well spent” for a change that he says has had a “profound” impact on his school.

That single biggest cause of problems, according to Drew, is the smartphone. And the £20,000 solution? Lockable pouches made mandatory for all students.

Phone pouches - used to restrict access to smartphones during the school day - are becoming increasingly popular in schools across the country. Teacher Tapp data shows that as of September 2025, 18 per cent of schools now use pouches or collect phones from pupils - double the number that were doing so in February 2024.

Of course, not all schools are trying to eradicate phones. In some, teachers regularly ask pupils to use phones as part of lessons (to take photos of the board or participate in quizzes, for example) or they have phone use embedded into the architecture of the school day, such as through the use of digital timetables.

But for those school leaders who do want to ban phones, are pouches a good option? How do they work? Are they really teenager-proof? And are there cheaper ways to ensure that young people aren’t distracted by devices?

From a school phone ban to pouches

Before it introduced pouches, Drew’s school - where 33.6 per cent of students are eligible for free school meals (FSM), above the national average of 25.7 per cent - banned the use of smartphones. “If they were seen, they were confiscated,” he says. But that didn’t mean students were always abiding by the rules. “Of course, we had situations where students were holding [phones] under the desk and using social media throughout the day.”

An outright ban, whereby students are not allowed to bring phones on site under any circumstance, is one way around these issues. But “parents want them to have their mobile phones on the way to school and on the way home”, says Drew. “They see it as a safety measure.”

The phone pouch, then, offers one solution. The upfront cost covers pouches for every student, plus the installation of magnet devices, required to unlock the pouches, at the school gates. The annual smaller cost covers pouches for new year groups as they join the school, as well as any required maintenance and replacements.

Exact costs vary, as different providers charge different amounts and the overall cost is determined by the number of students. However, schools tell Tes they have paid between £10,000 and £20,000 for the initial set-up of pouches, plus about £3,000 a year thereafter.

As for how the pouches work, the day-to-day concept is simple: a student arrives at school in the morning, turns off their phone and puts it in their pouch, which they show, locked, to a member of staff as they enter the building. During the day, the student carries their phone with them but is unable to access it until the end of the day, when they unlock their pouch via the magnet that they have access to only as they are leaving the school. Medical pouches - which are sealed with Velcro rather than magnetic locks - are available for students who have conditions such as diabetes that means they require access to their phone.

The exact details of how each school runs the policy - whether they cover the cost of the pouches or pass it on to parents, and what happens if a student forgets or loses their pouch - is up to them.

A broad shift in school culture

Many school leaders who have committed to the pouches say the benefits have been significant. “Every single aspect of school has been affected in a really, really positive way”, says Emma Mills, headteacher at Birchwood Community High School in Warrington, where 37.2 per cent of students are eligible for free school meals.

She cites some impressive year-on-year statistics since the school introduced pouches from the American brand Yondr in September 2024: attendance increased by 1.2 per cent; persistent absenteeism reduced by 8.2 per cent; and the school became the 36th most improved in the country in terms of GCSE results. Behaviour incidents connected to internet use, phone use and social media reduced by 94 per cent, and safeguarding incidents connected to mobile phone use reduced by 81 per cent. The school also didn’t have any permanent exclusions in the past academic year - the first time this has happened “in a very, very long time”, Mills says.

‘Every single aspect of school has been affected in a really, really positive way’

She acknowledges that these changes are not all down to the pouches alone. Rather, she says, the pouches have played a significant role in a broad shift in school culture: homework is no longer completed via apps, reducing reliance on phones after school, too, and the school has introduced 80 options for lunchtime clubs that students attend every Monday and Tuesday.

“We’re trying to introduce them to more hobbies, things that they might do out of school instead of being on the phone,” Mills says.

Scott Parker, headteacher of Tarleton Academy in Lancashire, has had a similar positive experience with pouches. His school is part of Endeavour Learning Trust and has a lower than average free school meals rate of 17.5 per cent.

Fewer lesson removals and suspensions

“It’s really hard to attribute impact data to one specific strategy,” Parker says, echoing Mills’ view that the pouches are one part of a wider school improvement campaign. However, moving from an “off and away” policy to pouches is, he believes, a key driving force behind some statistics, such as the 75 per cent reduction in lesson removals and suspensions compared with the same time last year.

“So many children, when they are removed from a classroom, will instinctively get angry. They’ll have their phone out, and then you get into that discussion with a child who’s struggling to regulate, saying, ‘OK, pass me your phone,’ and that leads to secondary behaviours, such as abusive or inappropriate language to staff, which would ultimately lead to a suspension.”

Now, Parker adds, phones just don’t enter the equation. “All of those things have come right down because we’re not having to have these conversations.”

He has also found that the pouches have benefited the school’s relationships with families.

Pouches ‘ease conflict with families’

Previously, when a student was issued with a detention, they could easily sneak into the toilets to text or call a parent to tell the story from their perspective, meaning that “children were on the front foot”.

“We found we were having a lot of conflict with families,” says Parker, because young people called home before teachers had a chance to. Introducing phone pouches, then, “was about taking back control” and asking parents “to trust us as the professionals in the building”.

This benefit is something Drew has also experienced since introducing pouches into his school.

Removing the temptation for students to communicate so frequently with their parents “helps the children’s resilience”, he says. “It encourages them to manage situations better. We think it has improved the quality of dialogue with pastoral leaders and staff, and parents report to me that they feel happier because their child isn’t contacting them throughout the school day.”

‘It’s capturing the zeitgeist’

Manny Botwe, headteacher of Tytherington School in Macclesfield - another school with a lower than average rate of free schools meals, at 18.4 per cent - says that the introduction of phone pouches is “one of the most popular, if not the most popular, thing with parents that we’ve done in my 11 years here”.

“It’s capturing the zeitgeist,” he says - referring to the fact that parents are increasingly concerned about children’s smartphone usage, often inspired by campaigns including the UK-based Smartphone Free Childhood or books such as The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.

It seems parents are now more wary of buying a smartphone for their child at a young age, with both Mills and Parker having noticed that Year 7s are increasingly arriving at secondary school without one.

Clearly, advocates of smartphone pouches in schools believe the thousands they cost is money well spent. But others aren’t so convinced, especially given the current financial climate.

Alternatives to pouches

Caroline Barlow, headteacher of Heathfield Community College in East Sussex, says her school simply insists that phones are not seen nor heard throughout the school day. “It works,” she says, with just 2 per cent of students in the autumn term having repeated incidents of phone use.

This approach comes from a position of trust, says Barlow. “My default position is to say I’d rather teach the young people to survive with their phone in their bag and not constantly be looking at it, than start from the position of, ‘You’re a young person, you can’t be trusted.’”

And while she hasn’t “ruled out” introducing pouches in the future, as long as the current policy is working, she says she’d rather save the money.

“‘What could I do with £25,000 rather than spend it on pouches?’ is our current position,” she explains.

‘I’d rather teach the young people to survive with their phone in their bag and not constantly be looking at it’

The cost is also off-putting to David Scales, principal of Astrea Academy Woodfields in Doncaster, who says the £12,000 bill to equip his students with pouches would be unfeasible “when there isn’t a lot of discretionary spend in a school” as it is.

Instead, his school collects phones in. Each morning students put their phones into numbered boxes, which are collected by their form tutor and placed in a trolley. They are kept in a secure location in the school, to which only five members of staff have a key, and while there, the devices are covered by the school’s insurance policy. At the end of the day, each child receives their phone back.

“We’ve not had a single error since starting it in September,” Scales says, explaining that all the advertised benefits of phone pouches - improved behaviour, concentration and safeguarding - apply here, too.

Those who have opted for pouches dismiss the idea of collecting phones in as an impractical way of managing the issue, although Scales proves that it can be done.

But there is an organisational element required for a pouch system, too, because staff need to be on hand to check that phones are turned off and put into pouches, and that the pouches are then locked.

In Lancashire, Parker says he has five heads of year on hand for the morning routine, and one member of the leadership team. “It’s not cost me anything additional,” he says, although he did change some contracts so that heads of year start half an hour earlier to manage the pouch check, and finish 30 minutes earlier, too. This doesn’t affect student timetables.

Positive start to the school day

Meanwhile, at Botwe’s large school in a semi-rural area, he has three entrances supervised by 15 staff altogether, who are on duty from 8.15am. “An unintended consequence [of the pouches] is that we now see all the students as they come into school, and we’re able to give them a welcome as well as we check that they’ve put their phone in the pouch,” he says, adding that this has helped to bring a positive atmosphere to the start of the school day.

Parker concurs. “Every student now is given a greeting before they enter the building,” he says, “which has allowed us to pick up on pastoral and safeguarding issues, and allows us to proactively tackle issues like uniform.”

Of course, you don’t need to introduce pouches to welcome your students into school every day. Meanwhile, critics add that a pouch won’t necessarily stop a student from accessing their phone.

For Scales, this was another factor in choosing not to introduce pouches. “Our view was that… if a kid wants to get the phone, they’re going to rip the pouch open,” he says.

The security question

Indeed, you don’t have to spend long on TikTok to find demonstrations of how to break into a pouch. So do pouches really completely prevent access to phones?

Naturally, students try their luck, says Parker. “We had, within one week, a student who hit the pouch and smashed their phone.” After that, few others tried it. “The message got out very quickly. I could count on one hand the number of students that have tried to get around it.”

Mills agrees, explaining that in more than a year of using pouches, only three students have damaged theirs by trying to get into it. She says this is likely because the use of the pouches makes the rules around phones even more black and white, so sanctions for not following them are “much more serious now”.

These sanctions, of course, do not apply beyond the school gate. So, does having phones sealed in pouches do anything to reduce pastoral issues stemming from phone use outside of school hours? After all, incidents of online bullying have a tendency to bleed into the classroom.

Sensible social media use

Botwe believes so, explaining that the introduction of pouches at his school came alongside a greater emphasis on “sensible social media use” in personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) lessons. “Parents and students are reporting far fewer incidents based on a reduction in the use of phones as well as youngsters thinking more about what they say and how they use the online space,” he says.

Drew concurs. “We have a view that there has been a reduction in the amount of cyberbullying that is going on in relation to our students, because we have removed one of the key times and places where it would happen,” he says.

However, he admits “that doesn’t mean it’s not happening at all. It doesn’t mean it’s not happening at weekends and in the holidays”.

While the political debate around whether the government should introduce a law banning phones in schools continues, pouches are one solution for schools attempting to get ahead of the curve. And while plenty are sceptical, others clearly believe they are the best option available.

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