€9 million to be spent on “electronic pouches for schools”

How do propose you do that?

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/taoiseach-accuses-sinn-fein-of-hypocrisy-over-opposition-to-phone-pouch-scheme-1679809.html

It certainly looks like it is going to backfire spectacularly on the opposition. It seems that the civil servants down here got the idea from a Northern Ireland pilot project introduced under Sinn Fein!!!!

Sinn Fein will quietly drop this now.

Well done Simon Harris! Went straight for the McDonald jugular and ripped what was left of her credibility to shreds.

I find it quite remarkable that the Big Cheese running the 26 county branch of SF doesn't pay any attention to what the slightly smaller cheese who is First Minister at Stormont is up to. Surely the two of them should compare notes before Mary Lou sits down, sharpens her red crayon and painstakingly scrawls a "Dear Simon" letter?

It's a depressing prospect; but it's still the least worse option.

its hard to tell, we ve no clue what a sf government would truly be like, but i do agree with some commentators, that theyd be pulled into a more centrist position, they certainly would mess up the odd thing, as ffg do, but the reality is, we may never actual experience a sf government, as they keep stuffing up and ffg are playing a perfect blocking game…..

again, this wont do anything to address the underlying issues, nothing!

Your comparing apples and oranges. Drugs and smart phones aren't seen in the same way by the masses. Both are absolutely addictive, but one will destroy your life and the other will destroy your ability to concentrate and be present with others.

Obviously Proper education is needed on the negative impact smart phones have on youth. But we obviously need to start somewhere, and I think locking them away for a few hours a day will help them focus on the important thing when in school. That is Education.

My school had a no phone policy and everybody chatted at lunch. We didn't need them to be locked away. Since when did schools with no phone policies allow people to take them out at lunch time?

As far as I know if the school allows the students out for lunch they can take out their phone to pay in the shops.

There's a lot of freedom for gravy distribution when folks refer to 10m as tiny.

This is a 10m contract for someone to basically place bulk orders on AliExpress.

You haven't read the article, have you?

It's not €9m to be spent on pouches, it's 9m available budget (roughly 10k per school) for schools to come up with their own initiative to tackle the issue of phone use in classrooms.

Lol.....if this is the best bang for buck it illustrates just how starved of oxygen some of the brains trust around norma or norma herself is.

Ffs....give schools back up to impose rules....if there are lockers, leave them in the locker, if not leave them.in the bag and impose consequences if done one steps out of line....there's an alternative.

Then take that 9 million and spend it on something useful...actually consult with schools, teachers, school leaders before going off on a solo run to try and feather your own nest etc

Perhaps ...but I bet its costing 10 times less up there ....and well be told its a big steaming pile of nonsense at some stage in the future too

There you have it….this 100%

I'd like to see Norma address that instead of steadfastly ignoring such things.…not a chance of course.…

How do you police them when they put a burner/decoy in the pouch?....because I'd bet that's where this is headed ...at that point you are back to having to police yhem just the same as you would have had the pouch not been introduced...

Eventually most will feel pressure to have the decoy ...tbh this nonsense could just increase the amount of phones per head of student population over time....definitely a whiff of the law of unintended consequences off this one...but you expect better from a "minister/handlers"....actually after decades of it I suppose I shouldn't....

My point would be it shouldn't be as hard to police if schools had authority and backup to impose these kinds of rules and make a student that won't comply take a break for a while.....that's an issue that needs addressing...a small but growing cohort of students that can't be disciplined and spend years disrupting others education with seemingly little or no effective deterrents etc

I have zero issues with these pouches and the government being paying them. I do think if you can afford the phone and want to bring it to school you should have to buy the pouch but that's another argument.

I will admit I've seen some these pouches/phone lockers being discussed on TV in the past. I didn't like these clear phone lockers because your phone was on display and they'd have been pressure to keep up with the Jones.

However when you heard the students discuss it. I always felt it was very forced and not natural.

I do think these will have a bit of a positive effect but I feel some people are over hyping them but it will take a while.

When I was in Primary School nobody brought phones.

In secondary school I remember in first year some people brought phones from the get go and some of us followed the rules and left them at home. Then we sussed the waters and figured out what you can get away with. I think these will go the same.

I'm 95% sure I heard students discussing these and the biggest pain they found about them was queueing up to get their phones out for lunch/going home. That's easily fixed.

Hard to know but pretty much all studies I read have given good feedback on this.

Im not expecting this to be a total solution but I hope it will make a decent amount of change. Most laws in life are rarely perfect solutions.

And as said previously, if 9 million was spent on this every 10 years, it would work out at around 32 cent per working adult per year which is peanuts.

as a said conspiracy stuff. Been pushed by a group setup to impersonate as a mother group and pushes anti Vax

you need to really consider where you get your information from

To be fair, it’s not entirely clear from any of the many articles on this, that it won’t mean schools will be expected to spend the money on electronic pouches, in an attempt to have a consistent approach across all schools:

Why would there be a need for "a consistent approach across all schools"? Surely, it would be up to each school to decide.

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/10/04/mobile-phone-pouches-will-not-be-forced-on-any-school-harris-says/

Yes, I know this. I never said I was.

I said I was in favor of these pouches.

I just said kids would put an old phone in the pouch and continue to work away on their old phone.

I also said that social media shouldn't be allowed until 16/18 and you should need ID to join these sites and the government should be doing more.

I'm not against these pouches at all. I just think they are sort of pointless and people will just work around them like we did with school rules and I feel some people are over hyping them.

That's good to know.

I also said working on them from 1st year is a good idea.

Can I ask what is the current phone policy in the school at the moment?

When I was at school back in the stone age. You had to be very sneaky to use your phone but I get the feeling this changed at students seem to walk around the corridors and use them in the school at lunch time now.

What was the punishment if caught?

Will the punishment be harsher now if they don't have it in the pouch?

I know it sounds like I'm against these pouches but I'm just interested in how they will work.

Ie will the current rule breakers just continue.

That’s the thing - a consistent approach is required to create a culture, by means of applying peer pressure and ostracising people who don’t conform. That’s why I initially thought it was a good idea, because it wouldn’t cost anything to have students police each other’s behaviour and apply peer pressure on the student who whips out the phone in class to check on updates or out of sheer boredom, etc:

But we need a universal culture across all of our schools. A culture that ensures that schools are places of learning, places of engagement, and places of one-to-one interactions and group interactions. The mobile phone disrupts that. We’re looking to establish this culture of a mobile-free zone within our schools.

The scattergun approach is the one that leaves it up to individual schools to implement a policy however they please, and having the DES support schools in having the autonomy to implement a ban in an inconsistent manner which could vary greatly between schools, thereby reducing the influence of peer pressure and failing to create a culture of intolerance which the Minister has in mind, apparently:

I know that many schools are already using electronic pouches so that students can securely store away their mobile phones during the school day. Different schools do different things. Some schools have a policy of keeping the phone turned off in a student’s bag during the day. Others get students to put the phone in their locker. Schools will have autonomy to implement the ban in their own way. The department will support them in doing that.

https://www.mayonews.ie/news/comment---opinion/1601297/guest-column-minister-norma-foley-why-i-am-banning-phones-in-secondary-schools.html

From my understanding and experience of the way in which these policies are usually implemented in giving schools both autonomy and funding, the idea is that the school will be given the funds to buy however many pouches according to the schools student capacity, much like the way capitation grants are based on student enrolment:

https://assets.gov.ie/296915/8589247f-8eb4-4236-b284-6dfe903e3db8.pdf

For me it’s not that there’s €9m being spent on the idea, it’s that any funds at all are being spent on the idea when it should really cost nothing to be able to implement a consistent policy of no phones or mobile devices in the classroom with exceptions made for pupils who have a legitimate reason to have their mobile device in close proximity so they can use it in emergencies should the need arise, and all other pupils the phone remains in their school bag during class time on silent so it isn’t a distraction for the student in question, or a distraction for the rest of the class. That’s just the aspect where the phone as a distraction is removed, it still requires that the students are encouraged to engage in interactions with others, as opposed to burying their heads in a screen of whatever description, oblivious to the existence of the world around them.

That’s great ted, but it misses the point - why the need for a pouch at all? All the Velcro version is doing, is adding additional complexity where there was never any need for the pouches in the first place. As you point out, and a system that is already established and has been in operation since I was in school over 40 years ago - contact is made through the school office!