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Mobile ban in schools not improving grades or behaviour, study suggests

It is the first study to look at school phone rules, alongside measures of pupil health and education.

The University of Birmingham's findings, peer-reviewed and published by the Lancet's journal for European health policy, compared 1,227 students and the rules their 30 different secondary schools had for smartphone use at break and lunchtimes. Colin Crehan, head at Holy Trinity Catholic School in Small Heath, Birmingham, feels a "moral obligation" to help students learn to use their phones in a "safe and controlled space". Within a few weeks of The Fulham Boys School in west London bringing in a "brick" phones-only policy in September, students were "over it", head teacher David Smith says - but "teething problems" came from parents worried about their children travelling across the capital without apps to help them.

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