View from abroad: Phone pouches in schools will help students to focus
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This year was a weird one in Irish politics. I won’t get into the nitty gritty of it all here (the Irish Examiner political columnists will have done a better job on that front) but from Michael Healy-Rae trying to be ‘brat’ on Tiktok, to Gerard ‘The Monk’ Hutch literally running away from members of the press at a count centre, there was enough to make you question the state of the Irish political landscape.
There were also a lot of questionable moments on the State expenditure side of things. This year, we heard that our new children’s hospital had racked up a whopping tab of €2.24bn. Some €336,000 was spent on a bike shed.
The country was awarded over €13bn following the legal case with Apple, which political parties used as somewhat of a red herring in their manifestos coming up to the election, as they all suggested how best to spend it.
But one figure that caught the attention of the nation was the €9m announced in Budget 2025 which was to be spent on phone pouches for schools.
There was anger, kickback, and outrage that so much money was going to be used in an effort to “make post-primary schools smartphone free” — or what sounded to a lot of us like a very, very expensive argument with teenagers.
In the days following the announcement, then-Taoiseach Simon Harris said “no pouch is going to be forced on any school, forced on any principal, forced on any child” — which raised more questions than it eased minds.
However, it’s important not to be completely combative. The concern around mobile phone use among young people is understandable, especially from a teacher’s perspective, and that of parents.
There are also concerns around cyberbullying, cybersafety, and mental health — though many have taken issue with the fact that there is little protection a pouch can offer after 4pm, when teens have free reign over what they say, do, and see online.
Like with many social issues, it’s important to look at other countries to see how they are tackling it. Are some dealing with problems regarding teenage students, their phone use, and their behaviour better than we are in Ireland?
I’ve spent a few months here in Spain teaching English as a second language (ESL) and reached out to other ESL teachers to ask if teenagers in Spain differ from that of their native country, or are they similar?
Claudia Bauman, from the US, and Isabelle Deramond, from Australia, are both working in Valencia. Bauman said that while she didn’t have much interaction with teenagers before working in Spain, she can still see some clear differences between the adolescents at home and those where she lives now.
“From here, I’ve noticed the teenagers are still teenagers,” she says.
“You see a lot of people in the street playing games — and I’m not sure if that’s from living in a city — but a lot of people seem a little bit more active and in the community, doing a lot of sports and stuff. Whereas back home, I think a lot of people are more so playing at home; video games, social media.”
Deramond worked as a secondary school English teacher in Australia before moving to Europe. She says that one big difference between the teenagers in Spain and those at home is their behaviour.
“Respect for teachers: Here (in Spain) it’s a norm for them to be complete ratbags,” she says, However, she prefaces: “I don’t think in Australia that kids are universally well-behaved, I think I was very lucky I was in a school where there was an undertone of participation, co-operation with adults.
“But I would hate to be a teacher in a [mainstream] Spanish school, it terrifies me,” she says with a laugh, “the idea of dealing with how unruly they are.”
As well as that, she says basic manners such as “saying please and thank you” are more commonplace in Australia. “And I think this would be the same in Ireland, there is — at the very least — a low level of manners expected.”
On behavioural traits, Bauman has noticed one concerning aspect of teens in Spain, or more the tweenage years.
“I have noticed that some of the younger teenagers are a bit more inappropriate,” she explains. “I have had almost-teenagers — like 12-year-olds — come up to me and saying very inappropriate words here on the street.
“So I think, maybe, they’re exposed to a lot of different words and ideas and concepts, more than maybe some sheltered teenagers back home.” Deramond points out that there are positive aspects of Spanish teenagers’ social lives.
“I do find they tend to travel in ‘packs’,” she says, “but the benefit of that is they tend to spend more time outside — and because they live closer together, I think that’s a big part of it — they tend to go out and see their friends after school.
“Whereas I think Australian kids are either busy with whatever hobby they’re doing, or they’re at home watching TV or on their phone. Like you go home, and that’s it: I don’t think you go back out and see your friends.”
Are phones an issue in the classrooms? Bauman believes yes.
“I definitely find in my teenage classes here,” she says, “they are constantly on their phone. Sometimes they don’t even realise it; like, I’ll have a really nice student that I will tell them once, ‘Please, do not use your phone’ and they listen, but then two seconds later, they pick it up without even acknowledging that they did it.
"And they feel bad because they don’t even mean to, but I think it’s just a habit for so many of them.”
Deramond points out that there were state measures in Australia to try and stop this type of behaviour.
“The Australian government — or our regional government, I’m not sure — passed this law that no phones were to be in the classroom,” she tells the . “So they could take them and bring them to their locker and that was it.”
She explains that because the school she worked in was an independent school, they had a choice over whether or not they implemented this law. While the school decided to apply it, she said it only “half-did it”, and therefore it wasn’t very effective.
“The [school’s] policy was if you (the teacher) saw a phone, you took it off them. I was more lenient as they got older because they were more trustworthy with it,” she says. “But the last couple of years, that [rule] had to become the policy because, no, they couldn’t be trusted with them and they would just be on TikTok in class.
Mobile phone and internet usage seems to be a growing concern for parents here in Spain too. This year, insurance company DKV and Educar Todo (a parents’ and expert group on educating teenagers) launched a study that focused on the perception of mental health in adolescents and the misuse of technology. It surveyed over 3,200 parents, teachers, teenagers, and experts.
Over half of the teenagers who participated in the study said they use their device to feel better when they are “lonely”, “sad”, or “angry”.
Meanwhile, some 55% of parents who partook in the survey said they feel they have difficulty controlling their teenager’s use of the internet.
I ask Bauman and Deramond for their take on the €9m allocation in Ireland for phone pouches in schools — is it something they would welcome?
“My teachers actually did that when we were in middle school,” Bauman says, “my school had these calculator pouches — which were much less expensive — and a lot of the teachers just used those. They took the calculators out and had kids put their phones in.
“It turned into a lot of people putting their old phones, or iPods, or fake things in there, but I do think it helped a lot in those teachers’ classrooms.
“We hated it at the time, but we were able to all focus a lot more, so I think it can be beneficial,” she says.
Deramond also feels it is a positive move. “Personally, yes, I think that’s brilliant,” she says.
“I’m very much ‘do-not-use-my-phone’, because I hate the feeling of being addicted to it, so anything that limits phones, I’m going to be on board with,” she adds, but highlights concern over participation and buy-in, from both students and their parents.
While, from the outside looking in, hearing a government investing millions into the welfare of children in school might sound positive, how do teachers in Ireland think the decision will impact teenagers? One Munster-based teacher tells me it is “the biggest waste of money known to man”.
They add: “It’s the biggest joke that that money has to be kept and only spent on the Yondr pouches, that the school can’t use [the funds] to their own discretion.
“Students, I think a lot of the time, don’t get the credit they deserve,” they continue, “they might not be [academically] smart, but they’re street smart, and they’re either going to give you a second phone that they have, or else go and buy the magnet from Amazon and unlock the pouches.”
They say that phone use in their school can be an issue, but it’s how a school deals with it which will determine if it’s a major problem or not. “I don’t think schools are doing enough, as is, in terms of phones and confiscating phones.
Another teacher, working in Dublin, tells me that it’s “not even a band-aid solution to an issue that may or may not exist, depending on the school”.
“Phones can be a problem,” they say, “they’re not always a problem if the school can manage them in a consistent manner. To lock them away in this way, as a solution, seems out of touch, to be honest.
“I know there are schools that use them (the pouches), and if it works for them, great. I think this, as the be-all solution, is completely absent-minded.”
How would these teachers like to see the €9m spent? In Munster, it could be spent on more physiological necessities. “It’s going to sound ridiculous, but on heating the school,” the teacher says.
“There are times of the year where they don’t turn on the heating because the funding actually isn’t there to heat the school. So we allow the kids to wear jackets and their coats in the classroom.
“It’s 2024, and we can’t afford heating, but have money left over to put into bags and seal them off with a ‘magic magnet’.”
Similar sentiments are echoed in Dublin. “It’s a waste of money,” the teacher tells the , “and it’s money that could — and should — be better spent in areas of education that actually need it; like additional educational needs, special needs assistants, and things in the school system that we’re lacking and need help in.”
There had been calls from opposition parties for the government to reverse the allocation, or to invest the money into areas such as the voluntary sector, but the efforts were all in vain. There’s no arguing that €9m is an astronomical figure, and there have been several ideas floated on how to better spend it.
But it would seem that our only way forward is to make our peace with the decision — just like we did when smoking was banned indoors and again when we were forced to pay for plastic bags. And then who knows, in years to come, we could look back on this time and wonder: “How did students ever concentrate pre-pouch?”