A MUM has hit out at a school as staff have refused to give her son’s phone back for a week.

Denise Davis said Poole Grammar School took her 15-year-old son’s phone away on Tuesday after he was caught using it in school hours.

Her son had been due to attend an English session during his lunch break when he was found playing a game on his phone under the stairs at school.

Ms Davis said her son will not have any access to the phone – including outside of school hours – until Tuesday.

She said: “It’s violating human rights to take away his personal phone. I know in the old days we didn’t have phones, but he needs it if anything happens on the way home. In the summer he had a bike jump and he was able to phone his dad.

“I was angry. This is not right. Why would a teacher keep it outside of school hours?”

She said she thought confiscating his phone during school was “fine” but not outside of school. Ms Davis said her son had previously been given a warning letter that his phone could be taken away from him, but this had not been passed onto her or her son’s father.

The teenager has been given a replacement phone to use by the school containing contact numbers for his parents but Ms Davis said she was confused as to why he couldn’t have his own phone back.

Andy Baker, head teacher at Poole Grammar School, said: “Our mobile phone policy has been designed to reduce the negative impact of mobile phones.”

He said the school has had a policy on mobile phones for the past five years which had been adapted this year to discourage pupils from using their mobile phones during lunch breaks when they could be participating in other activities at the school.

Students can use their mobile phones with the teachers’ permission for “constructive use” in lessons and are also able to make calls outside the school buildings if they need to let a parent know they would be late.

Mr Baker said he felt the school’s policy was “less restrictive” than others in the area that he said had tried to ban mobile phones altogether.

At Poole Grammar School, any student caught using their phones for other purposes, such as playing games, will have their mobile confiscated for one day on the first warning and for seven days on the second offence.

He said the policy has had a “positive response” and there were only a small number of pupils who had not followed the rules.

Mr Baker added: “It would have been very easy for this boy not to have his phone confiscated. Any issue of him not being able to contact his parents has been addressed as we’ve given him an emergency phone.”