Banning mobile phones in schools can improve students’ academic
performance. This is how we know. Author: Louis-Philippe Beland
Published: March 21, 2021, 8.49pm SAST The effects of mobiles
phones and other technology at school is a hotly debated topic in
many countries. Some advocate for a complete ban to limit
distractions, while others suggest using technology as a teaching
tool. Kids in public South Australian primary schools started the
school year without being allowed to bring their mobile phones to
class, unless they are needed for class activity. All students in public
Western Australian Victorian, and Tasmanian schools have a mobile
phone ban in place since for all or some of 2020. New South Wales
also banned mobile phones in public primary schools, with
secondary schools having the option to opt in, since the start of
2020. Education departments have introduced the bans for various
reasons including to improve academic outcomes and decrease
bullying. Several recent papers point to positive impact of banning
mobile phones at school on student performance and other
outcomes. Understanding the evidence is crucial for best policy. In a
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, 2015 paper, we used a method — called a difference-in-difference
strategy — as well as student data from England to investigate the
effect of banning mobile phones on student performance. In this
method, we compared schools that have had phones removed to
similar schools with no phone bans. This allowed us to isolate the
effect of mobiles phones on student performance from other factors
that could affect performance. We found banning mobile phones at
school leads to an increase in student performance. Our results
suggest that after schools banned mobile phones, test scores of
students aged 16 increased by 6.4% of a standard deviation. This is
equivalent to adding five days to the school year or an additional
hour a week. The effects were twice as large for low-achieving
students, and we found no impact on high achieving students. 4 Our
results suggest low-performing students are more likely to be
distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high performing
students can focus with or without mobile phones. The results of our
paper suggest banning mobile phones has considerable benefits
including a reduction in the gap between high- and low- achieving
students. This is substantial improvement for a low-cost education
policy. Other studies show similar results. Recent studies from Spain
and Norway, using a similar empirical strategy to ours, also show
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