Correspondence from Eastern Region

Cellphone use by students in basic and senior high schools especially during classes has served as a wild distraction with most either posting on social media, searching YouTube, surfing the internet, texting friends or even making or receiving calls.

The ban in the use of the device is therefore aimed at curbing student obsession, learning disruption, and disciplinary incidents that are usually associated with the practice.

However, this ban is being abused with impunity with most students sending the device to school and even class.

While some have called on authorities to enforce the ban and take punitive measures against culprits in the face of the abuse, others believe the students need the device for educational purposes.

When asked if students were complying with the ban on the use of mobile phones in schools, the headmaster of one of the senior high schools in the Eastern Region (name withheld) answered in the negative. “Not fully, so when we find them, we seize them,” said the school head.

He attributed the rampant use of phones in the school to the school’s poor WAEC results two years ago, adding that several of the devices were seized during the examinations.

“In 2021, our results were very bad because of mobile phones, the students, everybody wants to have an android phone or an iPhone…it’s surprising that on a single day, when the WAEC officials came around, they seized over 30 phones in the examination hall,” he disclosed.

Reiterating earlier concerns that the device serves as a distraction to students, he revealed that many of the seized phones contained vulgar items like pornography.

He expressed: “Seriously, the state in which it is now, it distracts them because they only make calls the whole night…most of the students, you pick their phones, you go to the file manager, what you find there is mostly pornography.”

Though he couldn’t give a specific number, the school head who said the institution has many seized phones in its custody suggested that the device could be regulated to enable the students to use them only for educational purposes.

An educationist and principal of the Jackson College of Education, Madam Theodore Jackson noting that the device is “not evil, demonic or devilish,” described it as “a means of learning to source information.”

Her concerns however revolve around what she termed as the abuse of the device. Describing the rate of abuse as alarming, she expressed concern at the apparent addiction and abuse of phones by the youth which serves as an unfortunate distraction from their studies.

“With the mobile phone, people don’t think these days, people don’t learn, it takes about 90 percent of the time of the youth, so with the phone, they can also access any negative thing in the world whether culturally it’s helpful or not and nobody can check what they access.”

Estimating that a chunk of the students flout the ban on the use of mobile phones in schools, Madam Theodore blamed parents for contributing to the phenomenon.

“The phones are banned but 90-95 percent of the students still use the phones and parents are the ones who want to give the children the phones,” she said.
Furthering that she noted, “Now that the whole world is moving with AI (Artificial Intelligence) the phone would be good to train our children to think ahead of the computer.”

Positing that the ban on the use of mobile phones is in the right direction nevertheless, the principal suggested that the schools must be permitted to own the device which they must avail to the students during specific subjects.

She suggested: “To me, I wish every institution, instead of buying calculators for them, should buy phones then when it’s English phonetics, they give the phones to the students and they use it to learn, if it’s research, they give it to them and they use it…”

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Most of the students who spoke to GhanaWeb justified bringing the device to school despite the ban.

A first-year day student sends an Android phone to school. Acknowledging that the practice was an offense and against the rules and regulations, the 17-year-old justified her actions on the grounds that her colleagues in the boarding house rely on her device to communicate with parents, friends, and other acquaintances outside the walls of the school.

Though she’s fully aware of the consequences of her actions, she appears unbothered, stressing strongly that she’d never be caught as school authorities don’t engage in any searches for mobile phones on students.

Another, a boarder said she’s emboldened to send her phone to school because school authorities do not act on the flouting, adding that she needs the phone for her calls.

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