Although canton Vaud has a rule of no cell phones in the classroom – teachers say the punishment of confiscating them is becoming highly problematic as the phone serves many uses.
Some schools will take a phone away for 24 hours for the first offence – but the confiscation time could be as much as a week for several violations.
But phones today are not just phones, they’re also public transport travel cards, payment systems and parents use them to track their children. A feature they want and value, so they don’t want their children to be separated from them.
Last month a court in Fribourg backed a father whose child had had his phone confiscated for a week. The father, who doesn’t live his child, says not being able to communicate with them for a week is unreasonable.
A judge agreed and called the lengthy ban ‘unreasonable’.
The court referred to rules in some German speaking cantons, such as Zurich, Solothurn and Basel-Country, that state the phone can only be seized during the school day and for a maximum of half a day.
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