Scottish schools ban camera phones

Primary and secondary schools in the West Lothian area of Scotland have banned pupils from bringing camera phones into school.

The move, which will affect camera-phone owners among the 30,000 children in 77 schools in the area, has been taken over fears of how images taken within the school could be misused by paedophiles.

A report on the BBC claims some schools have reported instances of pupils taking photos of one another during PE lessons and then distributing them over the internet, raising fears that the pictures, once in the public domain, could fall into the wrong hands.

The ban is backed by the local education authority as well as the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association.

The biggest concern for teachers has been over the covert use of camera phones.

The small form factor and the discrete inclusion of camera lenses on many modern phones makes them difficult to distinguish from normal phones and while children may mean no harm by taking 'candid camera' style snaps of their friends, schools were clearly concerned about the pictures falling into the wrong hands.

However, parents who have been pestered into shelling out for fashionable new phones with built-in cameras, who want their kids to still carry a phone, will have to now shell out again for a more low-tech handset.

One concerned mother of two, Debbie Allen, 28, who doesn't want her children to stop carrying a mobile phone, told silicon.com: "It's a good idea for kids to carry mobile phones in case you're going to be late collecting them or need to make arrangements for somebody else to pick them up."

In response to the ban on camera phones she said: "I think too many people dictate too many things to parents in the vain hope that they are being PC. I think it's a little over the top. When I went to a school play once we were told that no cameras or videos allowed for the same reason."

In support of other parents faced with supplying children with new, camera-less phones she said: "I'd tell the school to shove it unless they are going to fund it."