How going phone-free taught pupils at English secondary ‘to socialise, old school’

At Tenbury High students play tag rather than stare at screens after it brought in one of toughest phone policies

• Academy chain with 35,000 pupils to be first in England to go phone-free

Vicki Dean, the principal of Tenbury High academy, says visitors to her secondary school in the Worcestershire countryside think its pupils appear less mature than others their age because they are running about and playing rather than sitting huddled over their phones.

When I worked at my previous school, I still remember social time was like this," Dean said, mimicking holding a phone screen in front of her face. But Tenbury is different, with one of the toughest phone-free policies of any mainstream state secondary school in England, and Dean says that has influenced how her pupils act.