Mobile phone bans improve school exam results, research shows

Schools that ban pupils from carrying mobile phones show a sustained improvement in exam results, with the biggest advances coming from struggling students, according to research published by the London School of Economics.

The findings calculated that pupils at mobile-free schools benefitted by the equivalent of an extra hour’s teaching per week, meaning many schools would benefit from taking a tough line on keeping phones out of pupils’ pockets.

The large-scale study found schools in Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester that banned mobiles enjoyed a boost in the proportion of pupils getting five good passes at GCSE, compared with schools that allowed pupils to keep their phones, even if switched off.

Richard Murphy, one of the co-authors of the paper, said that the distraction and low-level disruption caused by pupils having mobile phones in school appeared to be behind the results.

“If schools have concerns about students being distracted by their phones, a strict ban on mobile phones does seem to be effective in improving student tests scores, especially those that a school might be concerned about because it ups the number of students getting five good GCSEs,” Murphy said.

The authors of the study – which centred on 91 schools and the exam results of 130,000 pupils since 2001 – found that the net effect was a 2% higher GCSE pass rate based on mobile phone policy alone, after accounting for factors such as gender and family income.

“That 2% is the average over everyone but we found that the impact of the ban was twice as effective for children with poor prior achievement or who were on free school meals,” Murphy said.

“Students who scored badly on their key stage two tests did twice as well from the ban compared to an average student. Kids that did well in key stage two didn’t gain at all from the ban. All the gains were driven from kids in the bottom 60%.”

Stuart Lock, deputy headteacher at Rushcroft Foundation School in Waltham Forest, said his school banned mobiles when it became an academy in 2012, at the same time as adopting tougher behaviour rules.

“Our strict behaviour policy, including on mobile phones, is a significant contributor to our improved results. I don’t think it is just mobile phones but the amount of time that used to go into investigating the use and abuse of phones was incredible.

“As well as this, the most eagle-eyed teacher could not be sure that pupils weren’t distracted by mobile phones. Since we know that distractions are key to undermining learning, this has improved learning – although we can’t measure exactly how much,” Lock said.

Murphy, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Texas in Austin, said the study did not take into account any positive effects for pupils using mobile phones for research.

King Solomon’s Academy, a west London school in the Ark group, has tough rules banning iPods, mobiles and other devices, under penalty of automatic detention and confiscation. A second offence in a year means a phone is confiscated indefinitely, no matter the cost to parents or pupil.

“There is plenty of solid evidence which shows that in order to learn, we have to pay attention. Again and again, research shows that when people are distracted or when they start multitasking, they don’t do as well as when they are able to concentrate fully on one task. That’s probably what underpins this finding,” said Daisy Christodoulou, Ark’s director of research.

“The challenge for people like me, who think that educational technology has great potential, is how we can use such technology in the classroom in a way that enhances rather than reduces concentration.”