London - Banning cellphones in schools would have the same benefit as extending the school year by five days, researchers have claimed.
They say the prevalence of phones has become “distracting and disruptive” for pupils and banning them could see a boost in test scores.
“New technologies are typically thought of as improving productivity; however, this is not always the case,” said Richard Murphy of the University of Texas at Austin.
“When technology is multipurpose, such as cellphones, it can be both distracting and disruptive.”
Murphy and Louis-Philippe Beland, an assistant professor of economics at Louisiana State University, measured the impact of cellphones on pupil performance by surveying 91 schools in four English cities (Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester) before and after strict cellphone policies were implemented.
By comparing exam records and cellphone policies from 2001 to 2013, researchers noted a significant growth in achievement in classrooms that banned cellphones, with pupil test scores improving by 6.41 percentage points of a standard deviation.
This made them two percentage points more likely to pass the required exams at the end of high school, researchers explained.
“We found the impact of banning phones for these pupils equivalent to an additional hour a week in school or to increasing the school year by five days,” Murphy said.
Low-achieving pupils benefited most from the ban, with test scores increasing by 14.23 percentage points of a standard deviation – a gain that was double compared with that of average pupils – making them four percentage points more likely to pass the exams.
However, researchers found that strict cellphone policies had little effect on both high-achieving pupils and 14-year-olds, suggesting high achievers were less distracted by cellphones and younger teens owned and used phones less often.
“However, these findings do not discount the possibility that phones could be a useful learning tool if their use is properly structured.
Daily Mail