Hundreds of Francophone schools to ban mobile phones

The 373 schools in the Wallonie-Bruxelles Enseignement educational network (WBE) will ban students' use of smartphones from the start of the new school year.

The ban will apply in nursery, primary and secondary schools over the course of the year, Le Soir reports, with the main goal being to cut down on harassment and bullying.

An estimated 132,600 pupils in 373 official WBE schools will be affected.

Some schools have already had a smartphone ban for years, while others began experimenting with restrictions more recently. For those schools, the ban is effective immediately. For most of the other schools, the ban will be implemented during the course of this school year.

“Over and above the bullying aspect, numerous studies have pointed to the consequences of overexposure to smartphones for health and the school climate,” said Julien Nicaise, managing director of the WBE network.

"This doesn’t mean that we’re not working on digital tools – quite the contrary. The aim is to supervise, guide and give young people the keys to making the best use of these tools, which are new to them."

Such bans aren not unusual in other European countries.

The Netherlands, Spain, France and Italy have already introduced rules restricting or completely banning the use of smartphones in schools.

Some Flemish schools, such as the GO! school group in Brussels, have also already introduced bans or restrictions that require any smartphone brought to school to be visibly stored when lessons are in progress, for example in a special storage area for smartphones in the classroom.