It’s all in the pouch: Principal changes his mind on mobile phone ban

Taranaki’s Waitara High School implemented a mobile phone ban at the start of 2023, more than a year ahead of the Government’s official move.

But it was only for pupils in Years 9 through 12.

Year 13s got to keep their mobiles.

“They can wear mufti and sign-out without parent consent. It’s a transition to adulthood,” principal Daryl Warburton told the Herald. It made sense for them to keep their phones, he thought. “I was reluctant to ban a device that’s so central to modern life. It was better to teach them how to use it responsibly.”

Now, he’s a convert to the Government’s total ban, which includes Year 13s, and break times.

Not having phones had got rid of a significant distraction in class and last year the academic results in Years 9 to 12 were up 15-20%, the principal said.

A Yondr pouch ($22) and unlocking base ($120). Photo / Supplied

“We had the best results in the history of the school, except Year 13 - so we saw the correlation.”

This year, with the total ban, senior academic performance has also increased.

And on a social level, “kids used to message each other in the hallway, from one metre away”, Warburton said.

“Now break times and lunch times are absolutely raucous.” Tag and bullrush are back. There’s been a notable rise in minor injuries.

“The biggest thing for us is the academic outcomes, but the social stuff has been great as well,” Warburton said.

“It’s really brought the place to life.”

A number of experts have also seen mental health benefits in giving kids a break from social media and online bullying, at least for part of the day.

Two problems

Two broad objections have emerged among other teachers and principals.

One is that kids have simply switched to using social media on their laptops.

In the case of Waitara, Warburton said each student is issued with a school-funded Chromebook (a low-cost laptop that runs Google’s Chrome OS). The selection of apps is locked down, and filtered.

The other, raised by Pāpāmoa College principal Iva Ropati (featured in the clip above) was that the blanket ban would create an “almost an unmanageable situation” for schools to police, particularly at intervals and break times.

And across the Tasman - where various state-level phone-bans are in place - Monash University Professor Neil Selwyn, writing in The Conversation - said his research highlighted enforcement challenges. Teachers in Victorian classrooms described “five minutes of firefighting” at the beginning of every lesson. (Selwyn also noted positives from keeping phones, such as “impromptu information seeking to live-streaming lessons for sick classmates” - although arguably those could also be achieved with laptops or iPads).

Pouch simplifies policing

Here, Warburton turned to Yondr - a technology he first encountered at a gig by comedian Chris Rock, who toured in New Zealand in 2022.

The US firm’s system involves a phone being put into a pouch, whose magnetic lock can only be opened by tapping it on a base station - a bit like the anti-shop lifting tags that can only be unsnapped at the till (see Warburton demoing it in the video above).

He did some online research and discovered that Yondr (made by a US firm of the same name) was not only popular with concert promoters who wanted to prevent unauthorised smartphone footage. The pouches were also being used across the Tasman, where state Governments in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and South Australia have all implemented phone bans.

How it works

Before the first bell, each Waitara student puts their phone into a Yondr pouch, which costs $22 - paid for by the school, with the pouch remaining the property of the school, though parents do have to pay for a replacement if a pouch is defaced or damaged with a break-in attempt.

The pouch then has to be placed at the bottom of a student’s bag (Warburton notes that in some cases this meant acquiring a bag; Waitara is low-decile) until the final bell.

It can only be unlocked by tapping it on a Yondr base station ($120).

“I didn’t want kids with heads in their bags, looking at their phones, or getting into arguments with their teachers [about whether they were looking]. I wanted it to be black-and-white,” Warburton said.

Feedback from parents was that many wanted kids to have their phone on hand at the end of the day for pick-up, or organising a sports practice or the like. A tap on a Yondr base station offered a quick unlock.

You don’t have to go far on Reddit and other forums to find kids discussing ways to covertly unlock a Yondr pouch, or even magnets for sale that purport to unlock it - but it’s not clear what’s genuine or a scam and there don’t appear to be any simple workarounds yet.

Warburton says his school runs twice-weekly inspections to check no one’s gaming the system.

Price worth paying, principal says

The San Francisco-based Yondr also offers admin support, staff presentations, and templates for materials such as information letters to staff and policy documents.

Its founder Graham Dugoni - who still uses a flip-phone and avoids social media - got the idea after attending a music festival in 2012 and witnessing unwanted phone filming. He went around California asking schools and venues to try his pouches. His first taker was a biker bar in Oakland that wanted to keep patrons from recording a burlesque show.

According to a Wall Street Journal profile last month, Yondr has never run advertising, his market instead growing through word-of-mouth. (Yondr doesn’t seem to have any local PR; the firm only sent information after the Herald stumbled on its technology then made contact to find out more.) Users have grown from 25,000 concertgoers in 2015 to six million (many in schools) by 2022 to 10 million as of May this year.

With 430 students, a full-price rollout would have cost Waitara around $10,000.

“We’re the first school in the country [to adopt Yondr] so we got a preferential rate as a pilot,” Warburton said.

“But even at full price, I’d be happy with the investment. It’s been fantastic.”

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.