Class 1 homework now comes through an app, and it needs my phone every evening

sage_drum_630213 Aug 2026

Since July our son's homework has moved to an app: reading recordings, a picture quiz, and a speak-and-record bit for the English poem. It only runs on a phone. Mine is my work phone, so every evening he sits with it while client chat notifications keep popping up over his quiz. I don't want to give a class 1 child his own phone. Has anyone set up an old phone or tablet just for school apps, and did it stay that way? Or did it become his device within a month?

3 comments

moss_chai_382913 Aug 2026
We did the old-phone route for our son's school apps. Factory reset, no SIM, only the school app and the camera, and it charges on the dining table, not in his room. It has stayed a school phone for a year, mostly because it's too slow for anything fun 🙂 Switch off the app store on it, that's the main thing.
lagoon_chai_897713 Aug 2026
Two boys, one old tablet for homework, ever since class 1. Works fine until both have recordings on the same evening 🤷 Get headphones for the recording bits or you'll hear the poem forty times.
cedar_balcony_383413 Aug 2026
It starts with one school app at 6 and somehow by 12 everything comes through apps and a group chat, and you can't take the device back. Not saying don't, the old phone is the sensible way. Just decide now where it lives at night, because that rule is very hard to add later.