Impact on academic achievement ‘close to zero’, but effect on well-being is more positive
A study from the USA suggests that mobile phone bans do not lead to an immediate upturn in academic results, but may offer schools other benefits in the longer term.
The study, by scholars at Stanford University, Duke University, The University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania, compiled data from Yondr, a California-based company that makes lockable pouches for schools and other settings. Researchers said they focused the study particularly on schools which use pouches as, unlike those which had less stringent policies, they could be confident phone use was genuinely being restricted. The large-scale report compared schools that did, and did not, take up strict phone policies over a three-year period across more than 43,000 middle schools (circa 11 to 14 year olds) and high schools (circa 14 to 18 year olds) nationwide.
The researchers found that in terms of phone usage, pouch-based phone bans worked – surveys in schools that banned phones found that the share of students reporting using phones in class for personal reasons fell from 61 per cent to 13 per cent, with GPS data also suggesting that phone usage had dropped significantly. However, they also found that the impact of this drop in phone usage was ‘consistently close to zero’ in terms of affecting standardised test scores in the three years after a ban was adopted. Effects on attendance were also ‘close to zero’, with no measurable improvements in either perceived online bullying, or in self-reported classroom attention.
Bans also saw an initial worsening of discipline – in the first year of adoption, schools which banned phones had on average an increase of around 16 per cent in their student suspension rates. However this effect faded after the first year, and according to the report may have reflected schools’ taking implementation of the ban seriously and issuing sanctions to students for non-compliance. By the third year of the study, exclusionary discipline rates had returned to their baseline level. Student well-being also dipped following the initial introduction of bans, but the authors found it then began to rise, and by the third year it was actually higher than it had been before phones were banned.
Commenting on the findings Thomas Dee, Barnett Family Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education and one of the report’s authors, said: ‘There is clearly justifiable enthusiasm for school phone bans, but it’s important to recognize that building effective, phone-free learning environments does not appear to be a simple or quick fix,’ adding: ‘The very early experience schools have with phone bans is sobering, but there are also indicators that as schools adjust to phone-free policies, the benefits of these bans may be realised.’
Another co-author of the report Matthew Gentzkow, professor of economics at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, commented: ‘Now that we’ve been able to really look at national evidence with a lot of detail, we can say both that there’s solid evidence of real benefits of these policies and that putting phones in pouches alone is not causing dramatic changes in test scores,’ adding: ‘This study is really a first step: It answers a number of important questions but also raises new ones’. It is likely that the study’s findings will feed in to the ongoing debate around the use of mobile phones in UK schools. As reported in our 24 April edition, last month the government announced that it would legislate to make guidance restricting phones in schools a statutory requirement – though it remains unclear if they will be required to physically restrict phones via pouches or similar measures. The Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), which runs 23 private schools and two state schools, has also recently announced a ban on phones for pupils up to year 11, which will come into effect from September this year. Some GDST schools have already implemented the ban and Allison Saunders, Head of the trust’s Notting Hill & Ealing High School said: ‘We have been using…pouches for a year to support a mobile phone-free environment and they have been transformative for our school. Students are more focused on learning and connecting with one another when on the school site, and we have eliminated ambiguity around expectations. For our staff, the pouches enable more consistent implementation of our phone policy and a reduced need for behavioural interventions relating to phones.’