Helping UK schools become genuinely smartphone-free

Smartphone Free Schools Rating is a pioneering UK charity working towards a clear, standardised framework for what it truly means to be a smartphone-free school. The rating system was developed by, and in consultation with, Headteachers across England and Wales, and categorises school policies across three levels:

The evidence behind this mission is compelling. Schools implementing Gold or Silver policies have seen GCSE results rise by 1-2 grades, according to a Policy Exchange report. Internationally, PISA 2022 data showed pupils spending less than one hour of leisure time on digital devices daily scored around 50 points higher in maths than heavy screen users. Beyond academics, effective smartphone restrictions have been linked to a drop in bullying rates from 33% to 18% among 12-14-year-olds, and a marked return to face-to-face interaction during break times. 

The charity's ambition is for every school in England and Wales to achieve Gold status by 2030. 

To reach that goal, Smartphone Free Schools Rating needed a reliable, scalable system for collecting and displaying school registration data on a public-facing map. In the early stages, several challenges stood in the way: 

• Manual, error-prone workflows - Gathering school policy submissions, validating data, and updating the public map involved significant manual steps, leaving the process vulnerable to inconsistencies and consuming valuable volunteer hours. 
• Limited technical capacity - The data pipeline depended on a single geospatial volunteer with FME experience. This created a fragility risk and limited the team's capacity to focus on outreach and advocacy. 
• Infrastructure and cost complexity - As a non-profit, the charity needed a cloud-hosted Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution that would minimise both financial outlay and the technical burden of managing infrastructure independently. 
• Long-term maintainability - The proof of concept needed to evolve into a production-grade solution that could be sustained and adapted as the initiative scaled. 

The mission of Smartphone Free Schools Rating resonated with the Avineon Tensing team. Contributing to the project was, for us, an easy decision, and we offered our certified FME expertise as part of our commitment to corporate social responsibility, at no cost to the charity. 

Working closely with the charity's technical lead, our support focused on three areas, centred on data orchestration: coordinating the automated flow of school registration data from submission through to the public-facing map.  

• Automation and resilience - We redesigned the FME workflow to automate the full pipeline: extracting, validating and transforming school registration data, then publishing it to Esri's ArcGIS Online for display on the public map. The workflow runs on a daily schedule, with a separate process updating authoritative school reference data from English, Welsh and Scottish government sources twice a year. 
• Building the business case - We supported the charity in presenting a case to Safe Software for a sponsored FME Flow Hosted environment, removing the complexity and cost of managing cloud infrastructure in-house. 
• Ongoing technical capacity - We took on responsibility for the day-to-day management and monitoring of the data environment, ensuring the charity has access to up-to-date FME expertise as the initiative grows. 

 A deliberate choice worth highlighting:  

For this sort of relational data, we might normally advise a database for storage. In this case, the team had already identified that simple spreadsheets would for a sufficient backbone for the process. After all, for a volunteer-run team where a human needs to be in the loop, a familiar spreadsheet interface is hard to beat. It keeps things practical and accessible; a great example of simplicity as a strength.  

The automated system now runs reliably in the background, requiring minimal manual intervention. School registrations are validated and surfaced on the public map daily - without consuming volunteer time. The charity's team can direct their energy towards outreach, advocacy and supporting schools on their journey to Gold status. 

More broadly, every school that achieves a Gold or Silver rating represents a healthier, more focused environment for the children within it. As the map grows, so does the evidence - and the momentum - behind a movement putting children’s wellbeing front and centre. With true, tangible benefits across the country.