Netherlands to ban phones and smartwatches in schools from 2024

Phones, tablets and smartwatches will be banned from classrooms in the Netherlands from January next year.

The Dutch government said the move is to stop pupils being distracted from their school work.

Devices will only be allowed if they needed for the lesson, for medical reasons or for people with disabilities.

What do you think? Should there be a total ban of smartwatches, phones and tablets at school? What are the rules at your school and do you think they are fair?

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The ban is currently an agreement between schools and the government, but the Robbert Dijkgraaf did say schools were not able to makes changes by the summer of 2024, legal rules could follow.

"Students need to be able to concentrate and need to be given the opportunity to study well," says education minister, Robbert Dijkgraaf.

"Mobile phones are a disturbance, scientific research shows. We need to protect students against this."

The ban follows a similar decision in Finland last week.

Learning tool?

However many others argue that smart devices should be considered like computers.

They are an important bit of tech which affect all our lives and if used properly could help people with school work and in their jobs as adults.

So it's important that children in school learn how to use them properly as part of their studies.

Will the UK ban smartphones in schools?

In the UK, the Department for Education did run a consultation on whether to ban mobile phones in classrooms in England, but concluded that schools already had their own individual plans in place.

In Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England it is up to schools to put in place their own rules, but in France phones are banned in classrooms following a similar consultation in 2018.