Thousands of students in France are facing a slightly different experience as they return to school this autumn, as they don’t have mobile phones.
A plan to ban mobile phone use during the entire school day is being tested in 180 “collèges”, i.e. middle schools where French children aged 11 to 15 attend.
A trial of the “pos numérique” (“digital pos”), involving more than 50,000 students, is being implemented ahead of a possible nationwide rollout from 2025.
Right now, students in French middle schools are required to turn off their phones. Moving forward, children will have to surrender their phones when they arrive at school.
It is part of an effort by President Emmanuel Macron to get children to spend less time in front of screens, as the government fears this is stunting their development.
The use of “mobile phones or any other electronic communication terminal device” has been banned in nurseries, primary schools and middle schools in France since 2018.
In high schools, where French children aged 15 to 18 attend, internal rules may ban the use of mobile phones by students “on all or part of the premises.”
Bruno Bobkiewicz, secretary general of SNPden-Unsa, France’s top association of school principals, said the 2018 law had been implemented “overall very well”.
“Mobile phone use is very low in middle schools these days,” he said, adding that in the event of a problem “we have the means to take action.”
– Improving the ‘school climate’ –
The experiment follows comments Macron made in January in which he said he wanted to “regulate screen use among young children.”
According to the report submitted to Macron, children under 11 should not be allowed to use phones, while access to social networks should be restricted for students under 15.
With the increasing amount of research showing the dangers of excessive screen time for children, this concern has become a Europe-wide issue.
Sweden’s public health agency said this week that children under two should be kept away from digital media and television altogether and that these should be restricted to older children.
EE, one of the UK’s largest mobile network operators, has warned parents not to give smartphones to children under the age of 11.
The French Education Ministry hopes that a cellphone-free environment will improve the “school climate” and reduce incidents of violence, including online harassment and the dissemination of violent images.
The ministry also wants to improve students’ performance, as telephone use adversely affects the “ability to concentrate” and “knowledge acquisition”.
The experiment also aims to “raise awareness among students about the rational use of digital devices.”
Jerome Fournier, national secretary of the SE-UNSA teachers’ union, said the experiment was aimed at “addressing the difficulties of schools for which the current rule is not adequate”, even if “it works in most schools”.
– ‘Complex to implement’ –
According to the Ministry of Education, “each institution will have to determine practical arrangements”, including the possibility of setting up a locker system.
Students must deposit their phones as soon as they arrive at school and keep them in boxes or lockers. They will get them back at the end of classes. This ban also applies to extracurricular activities and school trips.
But implementing this measure in all French schools from January 2025 could be costly.
According to local authorities, the measure would cost France’s 6,980 secondary schools “around 130 million euros”.
If the phone goes missing from the locker, this will create additional financial problems.
Education Minister Nicole Belloubet said on Tuesday that the ban would be “implemented gradually”.
“The financial cost seems pretty modest to me,” he said.
Many people are skeptical.
For SNES-FSU, the leading middle and high school teachers union, the ban raises many questions.
“How will we manage on arrival?” wondered union head Sophie Venetitte. “How will we manage during the day?” she asked, adding that some students have two mobile phones.
The SE-UNSA teachers’ union also expressed objections.
“We will need staff to manage arrivals, departures and drop-offs, and to collect mobile phones,” Fournier said.
“Sometimes students have time to put their things away when classes are over and run to the bus so they don’t miss it,” he said.
Bobkiewicz, of SNPden-Unsa, France’s top association of school principals, agrees.
He said he did not want to search students’ phones in their bags.
“It would be complicated to implement.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
