11 Plus Exams Forum

I dare say this has been done before but a quick search hasn't revealed much.

I have told my DD she will be getting a phone over the summer in readiness for Year 7. My thinking is that, without phone boxes these days, I'd like her to be able to contact me if she will be late. End of. SHE think it will be an all-singing/all-dancing smart phone with which to text her friends and " to take photos of my journey to show you, mum" (?!) etc.

May I ask what types of phones your secondary children use? I assume some do not have one at all, some have "bricks" that do very little other than make/receive calls/texts and there are others who have iPhone 5s?

Thanks

DD (Year 7) has a cheap Samsung from Tesco. DS (Year 10) had a cheap Samsung from Tesco until last week. Now he has my old Blackberry but for texts and calls only.

My dds are in Y9 and Y10 and are at school in a different town. They do a lot of after school activities which are sometimes cancelled at short notice, especially recently because of the weather. Sometimes we are all in different places and need to arrange to meet up. We have Blackberries that we got on free upgrades on our contract. The email facility is a great back up as they can contact me on the computers in the library if the phone battery goes or theiy break or mislay the phones. Many of their friends have iphones and waste a lot of time on them. They don't have Facebook or any social media. The phone is there for us to communicate but it is great for them to be able to get details of homework and lessons they have missed. Great technology but sadly misused. DG

DS2 year 8 had my old iPhone 3 until it died, now has DH's cast off anonymous something but rarely uses it. DD & DS1 year 13 & 10 have iPhone 4s that they saved up for themselves (we put a bit in for their birthdays).

13 year old y8 son has an old flip phone but never uses it. Y11 dd2 just got a Nokia 520 on a cheap contract for Christmas, after a variety of handmedowns of varying degrees of coolness! y6-aged dd3 has just acquired dd1's cast off Galaxy Ace which she thinks is very swish!

DS iPhone 5s, in year 9, doesn't stand out at all either amongst peers.

One has samsung y and the other a sony (?). Both have payg tariffs. Neither phones are the latest models or all singing and dancing.

Nokia lumias here, both have them on payg tariff, think they were just under 80 quid. We use tesco mobile as they triple your credit and they never seem to run out.

Samsung galaxy y for my DD on giffgaff. My mum has just bought the same phone.

A Blackberry style Nokia here, it is a smartphone but its data disabled so can only be used for text and calls. Was a hand me down from a friend who upgraded.