‘Poorly performing students score better if school bans smartphones’

Low-performing students benefit from schools banning smartphones from the classroom. This is the conclusion of a large-scale survey of students aged 11, 14 and 16 in four cities in the United Kingdom. High-performing students do not score better if the smartphone has to be switched off.

The 20 percent worst-performing students in the study, which used 130,482 test results from students between the ages of 11 and 16 from 90 schools, were found to score up to more than 14 percent better on exams such as the GCSE, the researchers write. Only the results of the students with lower scores turned out to be significant: no significant result of a telephone ban was visible among the better-performing students. An improvement in the score of around 6 percent was visible across the entire group of students.

The researchers compared the results of students before and after schools imposed a phone ban. In the event of a ban, the telephone is completely banned at the school or the students hand in the smartphones at the start of the lesson. The researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science distinguish between a ban that the school enforces and a ban that is less harsh.

Almost all schools surveyed now have a ban on smartphones. Of the 130,482 observations, 2002 were of students in schools who have never had a telephone ban. The researchers conclude that a smartphone ban can be an effective means of narrowing the gap between better and less scoring students.