Phones in the classroom: what France, the Netherlands and Spain's regions have done

Phones in class is one of the few school questions every family has an opinion on, and Europe has spent the last eight years trying answers. France legislated first, the Netherlands followed with a national agreement, and Spain handed the job to its seventeen regions. Each route tells us something, and together they point to a sensible rule for Spain.

France: a law in 2018, a "digital pause" in 2025

Law no. 2018-698 of 3 August 2018 bans pupils from using phones in écoles maternelles, écoles élémentaires and collèges, including school trips. There are exceptions for teaching use, for places the school's internal rules allow, and for pupils with a disability or health condition. Lycées can choose to ban phones in all or part of their premises, and a breach can lead to the phone being confiscated.

In practice many collèges let pupils keep phones in their bags, so in September 2024 the government tried something firmer: a pause numérique in which pupils hand in their phones for the whole day. According to the ministry's answer to a written question in the Sénat, the 2024–25 trials involved 50,000 collège pupils, nearly 80% of participating schools gave a favourable assessment, and the measure was extended to all public collèges from September 2025. The same Sénat question records the other side: the senator reported that 70% of heads surveyed in September had not yet been able to apply it for lack of means. Lockers and pouches cost money, and a rule without them stays on paper.

The Netherlands: an agreement, then a check

The Dutch government chose an agreement with schools over a law. Since 1 January 2024, phones, tablets and smartwatches stay out of secondary classrooms unless the teacher uses them for a lesson; primary and special schools followed from the 2024–25 school year, according to Rijksoverheid. The ministry promised to measure the effect before deciding whether a legal ban was needed.

The first results came in 2025. A survey of 317 secondary schools by the Kohnstamm Institute, reported by Reuters, found that about three-quarters saw better concentration, nearly two-thirds a better social climate and around a third better academic performance. These are schools' own impressions, which matters, and they are clearly positive.

Spain: a common minimum and seventeen rule books

Spain started with recommendations. In January 2024 the Consejo Escolar del Estado unanimously recommended no phones in infant and primary school, and on 31 January the education minister Pilar Alegría met the regions. La Moncloa's note describes the ministry's proposal: zero use in infant and primary education, and in secondary, bachillerato and FP use only for teaching when the teacher decides. The ministry called it a consensus of minimums, leaving each region to write its own rules. By then seven territories had begun to regulate since December 2023 and four already had rules.

Some regions were early. Madrid has banned phones and electronic devices for the whole school day since September 2020; Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia had rules from the mid-2010s. Others followed: the Comunitat Valenciana in May 2024, Catalonia with a ban at every stage confirmed in 2025. The bill on protecting minors in digital environments, which survived a vote on the whole text in Congress in September 2025 according to the Justice Ministry, would require every school to regulate phones expressly, raise the age for opening a social media account from 14 to 16 and oblige manufacturers to include free parental controls.

What the evidence adds

The best counterweight to the enthusiasm comes from England. The SMART Schools study, led by the University of Birmingham and published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe in February 2025, compared 1,227 pupils in 20 schools with restrictive rules and 10 with permissive ones. Restrictive schools cut phone use during the school day by about 40 minutes and social media use by about 30 minutes, but total daily use was the same, and there was no difference in mental wellbeing, anxiety, sleep, behaviour in class or results in English and maths. What did predict worse outcomes, everywhere, was more time on phones and social media overall. The Birmingham team concluded that we need to do more than focus on schools alone.

So the picture is consistent. Bans make classrooms calmer, which teachers value and which is reason enough to keep them. They are one piece of a larger answer about children's screen time, most of which happens after the bell.

A radical-centre rule for Spain

The left brings the strongest point on the platforms. Children face apps designed to hold attention, and the companies behind them should carry duties: free parental controls on every device, an age of 16 for social media, as the Spanish bill proposes. The market-liberal tradition brings the right instinct on schools. Heads and teachers know their buildings and pupils, so the region should set the floor and each school should choose how to meet it, whether pouches, lockers or a box at the classroom door, with families answering for what happens at home.

The piece neither side owns is Karl Popper's. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper argued for reforms that can be tested and corrected. Spain has already run the experiment by accident: seventeen regions, different rules, different start dates. What it lacks is the measurement. The ministry and the regions should agree a handful of common indicators, collected the same way everywhere, covering pupils' concentration and wellbeing, incidents of cyberbullying and the results of the diagnostic assessments, and publish them by region every year. The Netherlands showed how cheap a first check can be.

That gives a clear rule: a national floor of no phones in infant and primary school and phones away for the whole day in ESO, with teaching uses decided by the teacher; school freedom over enforcement, with money for lockers where schools need it, so France's 70% problem does not repeat; legal duties on device makers and platforms; and one evaluation across all regions, with the floor revised when the data says so.