At the start of term 2 2024, the NZ government introduced a new phone ban during school hours. This ban includes lunch and interval, meaning students are not allowed access to their personal devices at all from the time school start to the time school ends.

This ban impacts students in secondary schools by depriving them of a necessary tool that helps them with communication, organization, and learning. Phones are an important tool for secondary school students. They are important for students who commute, medical emergencies, and unpredictable students, as reasoned by (scienceandliteracy.org). Even though schools say they can help with communication of parents and students, with no students able to access their phones, they won't be able to support every single student who needs help to communicate, since they have many other things, they need to take care of, meaning many students will have to resort to breaking the rules.

Plus, using phones during break periods do not affect our learning, as this is when we are supposed to be taking a break from that.

This petition is aimed to reevaluate so students in secondary schools can use their phones during lunch and interval. The reasoning behind this is that it is our own time, and we should be allowed to use our phones without being at risk of having them taken away from us.

This petition matters because by signing this, you are expressing your voice and exercising your rights. It is important that we are heard because I think this is unfair to us because we should be allowed to use them in our time of rest and leisure.

From my experience, I know that many students are being affected by this ban, and not in a positive. So we need to act and let the government know that what they're doing isn't helping us, it's hurting us.