A head teacher has announced plans to extend the school day to 12 hours in a bid to crackdown on phone addiction among pupils.
The All Saints Catholic College in Notting Hill, London will expect students to turn up at school for 7am and not leave until 7pm.
The extra hours will be filled with activities such as sport, art, drama and cookery lessons.
Head teacher Andrew O'Neill, who masterminded the scheme, hopes that the new timetable will help stimulate pupils in different ways and help put an end to a "100 per cent phone addiction".
This is not the first attempt from All Saints to crackdown on phone usage.
In 2016, the school banned mobile phones from being carried by pupils and said that they must be kept in bag or in locker.
All Saints Catholic College in Notting Hill, London will expect students to turn up at school for 7am and not leave until 7pm
ALL SAINTS CATHOLIC COLLEGE
But O'Neill said that further action was needed in order to tackle a wider problem of over-reliance on phones.
"We have a long-term issue we need to solve," O'Neill told The Times.
"If we don't we will have a generational problem with workplaces and society.
"Some children are so apathetic. They don't care about anything.
Head teacher Andrew O'Neill said "some of the most shocking things I have ever seen" were on the phones of pupils
"They are buried in their phones."
Research by Ofcom indicates that by the age of 12, 97 per cent of children have their own mobile phone.
The 42-year-old said that "some of the most shocking things I have ever seen" were on the phones of pupils at his school.
He said a number of the 900 students at All Saints has been victim to cyberbullying, sexting and even blackmail.
O'Neill's intervention comes just two months after the Government set out plans for mobile phones to be prohibited in schools across England.
Guidance issued on February 19 backed head teachers in prohibiting the use of mobile phones throughout the school day, including at break times.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said at the time: "Schools are places for children to learn and mobile phones are, at a minimum, an unwanted distraction in the classroom.
"We are giving our hard-working teachers the tools to take action to help improve behaviour and to allow them to do what they do best – teach."
