School phone bans: what the rules cover and what parents still have to handle

What the rules usually say

Almost every national ban is written the same way: no phone use during lessons. The building is not the subject, teaching time is.

The wording usually covers more than a smartphone. A tablet with a SIM card and a smartwatch that takes calls fall under the same line, because the point is connectivity rather than the shape of the device.

Emergencies are the standard exception. If something happens, a child picks up the phone and calls.

Who has a ban now

France went first, with a national ban on phone use in primary and lower secondary schools in 2018. In November 2025 the government said it would extend the rule to lycées from the 2026–2027 school year.

The Netherlands brought in a national policy in 2024 that keeps smartphones, tablets and smartwatches out of the classroom.

In England the revised guidance became statutory in June 2026, and schools were required to have a policy prohibiting phone use in place from September 2026.

The count is no longer a European story. By 2026 around 106 countries and 39 US states restrict phones in class, and more than half of the education systems tracked worldwide now have a national policy of some kind.

How schools enforce it

The law rarely says how, so each school picks a method and parents meet three of them.

Phones off and in the bag is the lightest version. Lockable pouches and a box by the door are the strictest. A split by age sits in between: firm rules for younger classes, more freedom for the oldest ones.

Whatever the method, the school writes it down in its own policy. That document is the one worth reading before arguing in the class chat, because it is what staff actually apply.

What a ban does not cover

Breaks, lunch, the walk home and the whole evening stay outside the rule. So does the part that worries most parents: what happens after homework, when nobody is watching the clock.

A ban also depends on the child keeping to it. Asking an eleven-year-old to leave a phone alone for forty minutes is roughly like asking an adult to ignore notifications during a meeting.

That is the gap a school mode fills: the phone itself knows a lesson is on.

School mode in Gardion

A parent turns it on from their own phone or from the web dashboard.

While it runs, only the apps on the allow list open: school services, a messenger, transport, the banking app that pays for lunch. Games, feeds and video are closed. Ready-made buttons cover the usual classroom tools, and anything local goes on the list by hand: a school portal, a site, a program.

The mode starts for a set number of minutes and switches itself off, so nobody has to remember it after the last lesson.

Three details changed in September, and they are the ones parents kept writing about.

A lesson does not spend the daily limit. School minutes are subtracted from the day’s total, so an hour in an allowed learning app no longer eats the evening.

The lock never lands mid-lesson. School mode is checked before the limit, so the screen does not go dark in the middle of an explanation.

Break reminders stay quiet. Nothing interrupts a lesson, and the break counter pauses while school mode is on.

The counter measures screen time rather than the clock. A phone that spent the lesson in a bag does not hand the child back forty minutes they never used.

After the bell

School mode covers lesson hours. The rest of the day runs on the ordinary rules: a daily limit, a night schedule, limits on individual apps.

The ready-made School routine sets weekdays to an hour a day and blocks the device from 22:00 to 08:00. It applies in one tap and can be edited per family afterwards.

The free plan covers one device, which is enough to see how the whole thing behaves on your own child rather than in a description.