The Old Fire Station Children’s Nursery recognizes that staff may need to have access to mobile phones on site during the working day. However, there have been a number of queries raised with the local authority and nationally regarding the use of mobile phones and other devices in educational settings. The concerns are mainly based around these issues:
The Old Fire Station Children’s Nursery allows staff to bring in mobile phones for their own personal use. However, all staffs are required to sign their phones in at the start of the working day. They will be kept in a secure location in the office at all times. Phones need to be signed back in when they returned on to the nursery premises. They can be signed out at break times and at the end of the working day, to be used off the premises. If staff need to make an emergency call, they must do so in the office. Staff must ensure there is no inappropriate or illegal content on the device. If staff fail to follow this policy, disciplinary action will be taken. Mobile phone technology may not be used to take photographs anywhere within the nursery grounds unless written permission has been granted from the Nursery Manager, parents and all other parties involved. There is a digital camera available within the nursery and only this should be used to record visual information within the consent criteria guidelines of the local authority and the nursery.
Members of staff may only contact parents/carers on the nursery landline phone. When children undertake an outing or trip a member of staff will take their mobile phone, they should be limited to contact with the nursery or venues being visited, except in emergencies and then only by approved telephones.
Parents and children should not use mobile phones within the premises and should not bring in mobile phones (or any other form of recording devise) to nursery, except in exceptional circumstances about which the nursery has been informed and appropriate consent has been given. In such circumstances, the phone must be kept in the office until they go home.
Upon their initial visit volunteers and visitors are given information informing them they are not permitted to use mobile phones on the premises. If they wish to make or take an emergency call they must use the nursery telephone in the office. Volunteers or visitors are not permitted to take photographs or recordings of the children without the manager, deputy manager or nursery owner’s permission.