IF you, like a lot of parents are sick of prying your child’s hands from an X-Box controller so they’ll do their homework, one school in the UK is claiming to have the answer.
King Solomon Academy, located in the west of London, has begun confiscating the game consoles and phones of their students, if parents request it.
Despite the Academy being less than 10 years old and located in one of the poorest areas of the city, by 2015 it was ranked as the best non-selective school in the country by the Department of Education.
The school’s principal Max Haimendorf, spearheaded the disciplinary measure which he claims, was to encourage good behavior.
“What has happened more than once is that the parent has come into the school and said, ‘I do not want my child using this. I want you to keep it until they are better behaved,’” he told The Sunday Times .
“Where specific children have said, ‘I have been up late playing PlayStation’ or ‘up late on the internet’, there definitely have been circumstances where [they] have been clearly exhausted in classrooms,” Haimendorf added.
The school has been praised for its strict way of teaching which also includes an eight hour day followed by either two hours of homework or detention.
Barnaby Lenon, the former principal of Harrow School, one of Britain’s most exclusive boarding schools, also applauded Haimendorf’s stance in an interview with The Sunday Times.
“I have come across schools in which boys have stayed up all night to play games like Call of Duty across time zones. Parents need to be helped by schools to set limits on children’s use of these devices.”
And, this isn’t the first time Haimendorf has made the news.
In 2010, when he was 30, Haimendorf was named headmaster of the Academy, making him the youngest in the UK.
But, while Haimendorf is condemning game consoles, a number of Australian schools have instead embraced X-Box consoles to encourage learning.
In 2013, the Xbox product manager Adam Pollington told news.com.au they were using virtual reality to aide classroom learning.
“Up until now, there really hasn’t been a relevant program on the Xbox console specifically that would really aid in the classroom environment,’’ Mr Pollington said.
“Children these days are digital native. They’re growing up with technology in the home for largely entertainment purposes, so it makes sense to bring those forms of technology into the classroom to help them learn,” he added.
William Rose, a school located in the west of Sydney, used the technology for their students with special needs.
This article was originally published in news.com.au
