Banning mobiles in schools or clutching at straws?

We have a school here in Southend which is described as an Alternative Provider school.
Drive past at break time and you will see teachers vaping with the pupils.
These are children who are there because for whatever reason they don’t fit with the normal school system. What hope for them?

At my DGS2's school, mobile phones are permitted and are sometimes used to support learning where research online is part of the lesson. There isn’t enough funding for other devices (eg iPads) to be provided for all. He is 13 and attends a state comprehensive in the next town to where they live so depends on lifts at times when attending after school clubs.

They should have been banned years ago, but parents protested that children needed to keep in touch with home 'in case they felt threatened'.
Vaping is a huge problem. Whenever schools attempt to ban items the protests come from the parents.

My granddaughters school have a system, where, without warning 2/3 classes are told, into the hall now with your bags.
The parents are informed if their child’s phone has been confiscated. It’s working.

Disposable vapes are to be banned in the U.K.