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France is to tighten its ban on the use of mobile phones in middle schools, making pupils at the ages of 11 to 15 shut away their devices in a locker or pouch at the start of the day and access them again only as they are leaving.
The education minister told the senate she wanted children to be fully separated from their phones throughout the school day in all French middle schools from September.
Élisabeth Borne said: “At a time when the use of screens is being widely questioned because of its many harmful effects, this measure is essential for our children’s wellbeing and success at school.”
In 2018, France banned children from using mobile phones in all middle schools – known as collèges. Phones must remain switched off in schoolbags and cannot be used anywhere in the school grounds, including at break-time.
Schools have reported a positive effect, with more social interaction, more physical exercise, less bullying and better concentration. But some did report a few children would sneak into the toilets to watch videos on phones at break.
Now the government says it is necessary to go further, fully separating children from their devices for the entire school day.
This enforced “digital pause” – as the French government calls it – has been tested in a pilot scheme in about 100 middle schools for the past six months, with children giving up their phones on arrival – placing them a locker or box, or in a special locked pouch that can only be unlocked by an electronic system at the school gates as they go home.
Devices are banned in primary schools.
Borne told the senate: “All the feedback from the trial is positive, namely on improving the atmosphere in schools, and there has been massive support from parents and teachers.”
After some unions questioned the cost and logistics of organising the scheme, Borne said it would be up to headteachers to choose a format – for example lockers or pouches – adding that it would cost no more than a few thousand euros.
Borne, who quoted a study last month by the French National Book Council, said: “A young person now spends on average five hours a day in front of a screen, but they only spend three hours a week with a book … Not only is reading going down, but for those who do read, half of them are doing something else on their phone at the same time. All that is damaging to students’ success.”
A report by scientists and experts commissioned by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, last year concluded that children should not be allowed to use smartphones until they were 13 and should be banned from accessing conventional social media such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat until they were 18.
No child should have a phone before age 11, the report said, and they should only have a handset without access to the internet before 13.
Macron has said he favoured taking steps to limit children’s exposure to screens.
The moves come as the leader of England’s largest teaching union calls for a statutory ban on phones in schools. A survey of more than 15,000 schools found that 99.8% of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools in England had some form of ban.
The Guardian Tech RSS
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/10/france-mobile-phone-ban-middle-schools
