On Tuesday morning, the lack of electricity made for a lovely start to the day. It was cool enough to be pleasant inside and light enough for us to be able to see. The main difference was the temporary lack of access to emails, which also made for a more relaxing than normal beginning!

After a wander around High School with Mr Shadgett, pointing out how he would ring a manual bell to signal the end of recess and lunch time (we had no doubt the students would point out the start of each break, should their teachers not notice the time!) and how staff could still use SEQTA on their phones to mark attendance, I went back to my office and hand wrote a large stack of cards to wish VIPs and friends of the School a chag Purim sameach. I summarised a document regarding wellbeing that I had been working on and I finished writing up my notes on a new teacher lesson observation. I sorted out too many scrappy Post-its and notes on ‘things to do’ and collated them all in priority order in a new to do list. I was just about to start tidying my desk, when the lights flickered on and I heard various pings and electronic noises popping on in the building. Western Power's strategy of under promising and over delivering meant that although power was supposed to be restored by 6pm, it was back on well before lunchtime and the peace ended.

In classrooms, learning continued - for some teachers, a lesson without laptops, instead writing on the board and using pen and paper would have felt familiar. For others, I imagine they had not worked previously without technology in their classrooms, and I'll be interested to hear how their morning went.

The morning's lack of technology fitted rather conveniently with my current book, Jonathan Haidt's 'The Anxious Generation', in which he explores the impact of smartphones and social media on young people’s mental health, arguing that the rise of digital technology has contributed to increased anxiety, depression and social disconnection. He suggests that excessive screen time, particularly unstructured online interactions, disrupts healthy development by replacing real-world experiences with digital ones. Haidt advocates for a shift towards more socialising in person and delayed access to smartphones, especially for younger children, to help rebuild resilience and wellbeing. This, coupled with recent media coverage on the effects of mobile phones on our young people, reinforces Carmel School’s clear boundary on mobile phones which are to stay in lockers during the school day, to give young minds a break from their screens.

Parents can support this by not contacting their child during the school day but calling reception with any urgent messages instead. It is also a salutary reminder to us as adults that we can easily keep an eye on our own screen time. The global average time spent per day on a screen connected to the Internet in 2024 was 6 hours and 40 mins per day. It leaves me wondering what we could achieve in that time if we weren’t on our phones.

Julie Harris

Principal