A headteacher is asking children to stay in school for 12 hours a day to “stop them going home and sitting on their phones”.

Pupils of All Saints Catholic College in Notting Hill, west London, will be in class from 7am until 7pm this week after headteacher Andrew O’Neil brought in the rule.

He believes it will help reverse a “100 percent addiction” with children and their phones and social media.

Mr O’Neil is offering art, drama, dodgeball, basketball and cookery classes after lessons to extend the school day and a hot dinner will be served.

He told The Times: “At this school, we are trying to break the cycle of kids using phones causing so many problems.

“We are trying to give children activities in the evening, the kind of play-based childhood I enjoyed growing up in the village of Barton, near Darlington, instead of going home to their bedrooms and their phones.

“We have a long-term issue we need to solve. 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. They are buried in their phones. We want to help them and say this is an alternative.”

The school have already completely banned phones, with pupils who dare bring in their device risking losing it for five days if it’s caught.

It comes after schools were instructed in February to ban mobile phones from classrooms under new Government guidance.

The crackdown aims to tackle “unnecessary distraction” during lessons and throughout the school day, with institutes given the discretion to decide their own mobile phone policies.

But the guidance issued aims to provide “clarity and consistency” for teachers and staff.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said it will give teachers across England the “tools take action to help improve behaviour and to allow them to do what they do best – teach”.