Leaders' letters

Keep mobile phones safe and sound

In response to the Hotline question on mobile phones, our experience might be helpful. The school has adopted a simple strategy that has to date caused no issues with parents, and precious little with pupils. The policy has been in place for four years.

Any pupil seen with a mobile phone has it removed. The phone is then placed in a sealed envelope with the pupils name on it and put in the school safe.

It can only be collected by the parent or legal guardian. This policy is in the school brochure and always emphasised at new parents information evening.

If pupils have a phone, if it is not seen, nobody goes actively looking unless there is an issue. The parents are also very aware of this.

B Hawkins, Kesgrave High School, Suffolk

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Reporting concerns

Thank you, Adrian Elliott, for this excellent article ('Never did me any harm...' September Leader). But you are addressing the wrong audience. We in education know that you are right. The message needs to be understood by every journalist in the country, tabloid or otherwise. Then we can perhaps begin to destroy the myth that good results = easy exams; poor results = bad teaching.

Andrew Burton, Assistant Head, Greenhead High School, West Yorkshire

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Article 'never did me any harm'

I look forward to buying and to reading Adrian Elliot's book. It does strike a chord. I have numerous examples of poor teaching from my own selective grammar school and even more from the emergent comprehensive where I started my teaching career.

On the other hand, I have seen so much good practice in the 200 or so schools that I have visited in the last three years and none of the lack of progress described as the norm in the press.

In quoting from the Times, Adrian has missed the most rabid views on education contained in the Daily Telegraph. In their education reporting, they never let the facts get in the way of their story!

Neil Donkin, Donkin Education Limited, West Yorkshire