MOBILE PHONES TO BE BANNED IN CLASSROOMS FROM NEXT YEAR IN NETHERLANDS

Wed 05 July 2023:

In an effort to prevent technology from disturbing teaching, the Netherlands said on Tuesday that it will ban cell phones from classrooms.

The Dutch government has announced that from the start of the following school year, mobile phones, tablets, and smartwatches would not be permitted in the classroom.

The ban has been agreed on by the Education Ministry, schools and other related organizations.

Dutch Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said mobile phones don’t belong in the classroom, even though they “are intertwined with our lives.”

“Students need to be able to concentrate and need to be given the opportunity to study well. Mobile phones are a disturbance, scientific research shows. We need to protect students against this,” he added in a statement.

Dijkgraaf said schools will be given the space to implement the ban as per their own plans, but warned that legal rules would apply if the ban was not implemented by the summer of 2024.

The government is asking school authorities to agree internal rules with teachers, parents and pupils by October.

The country’s centre-right coalition has not yet imposed a formal ban, but says it reserves the right to do so after measuring progress next year.

Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf told parliament he hopes the move will usher in a “cultural transformation” and improve learning.

The Dutch decision follows a similar one in Finland announced last week.

In Germany, only the state of Bavaria formally banned mobile phones in schools until the last academic year, when the ban was relaxed. German freedom laws generally contradict a ban on mobile phones, though schools have the freedom to issue their own regulations.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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