Czechia moves to ban mobile phones in schools from September 2027

https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/czech-news-in-brief-for-july-20-2026-monday-top-afternoon-headlines

by Markoff • 2 days ago

158 84 2 days ago

everdrive• 2 days ago

Workplace next!

bilekas• 2 days ago

I think you might need to narrow down what kind of workplaces... A taxi/bus driver, agreed. A an integration engineer, hard disagree.

Either way, when you're an adult, assuming you would be in a workplace, you're maturity should decide. If you want to be a distracted employee and risk termination, you're an adult.

weezing• 2 days ago

Yeah, especially in Indian scam call centers.

Cider9986• 2 days ago

Actually effective way to protect kids without massive societal consequences and it also improves learning.

basisword• 2 days ago

How is this effective at all? Every kid will continue to use them surreptitiously, as they always have.

oblio3• 2 days ago

This type of repetitive comment[1] is a bit like the bike lanes discussion:

1.City introduces bike lanes on street.

2. Residents complain about parking spaces going away, businesses complain about future bankruptcies due to fewer customers, general uproar is huge.

3. Residents discover bike lanes are quiet, and they also reduce ambient noise levels due to reduced car traffic, air is also cleaner, roads and intersections are safer.

4. Businesses (re) discover that cars don't buy things, people in big metal boxes going 50+kmph don't buy as many things. But people biking and walking are... foot traffic... and business goes up.

5. City decides to introduce bike lanes on another street.

6. Cycle repeats.

To your point about phones, it is very effective. If nobody can take their phone out on the school premise, suddenly it's very obvious who's trying to break the rule and guess what. Kids play, kids talk face to face, etc.

* * *

[1] This type of comment is one of the first things posted for these types of articles.

cromka3• 2 days ago

Every kid? Seriously?

vel0city• 2 days ago

I can only speak for what I've seen, and my state has banned phones during school.

Before the ban, students would just openly use devices during class. Teachers were essentially powerless to do anything. Kids would be openly playing games, watching videos, etc with practically no recourse.

Now with the state law actually forcing it, enforcement is mugh higher. If phones are caught out the administration takes the devices and requires a parent to come into the school to sign off and release the device.

Does some usage still happen? Sure. Is it far less than before and considerably less during actual classtime? Absolutely.

It's like you're arguing murder still happens even though it's illegal so what's the point of making it a crime.

georgeburdell• 2 days ago

Stanford researchers studied the second assertion and found no change

https://ed.stanford.edu/news/national-study-school-cell-phon...

RandomLensman• 2 days ago

No immediate benefits but could be beneficial long-term (increased well-being but not the same as learning). Whether things in Czechia are comparable to that US situation I wouldn't know.

eesmith2• 2 days ago

Bear in mind that those conclusions are for a different student population -- country of course, but also age range:

Czech schools: "The new measure, which has been at the center of heated debates in recent months, will apply in kindergartens and elementary schools, most likely from September 2027. ... It doesn't apply, however, to secondary schools, universities or vocational schools."

The Stanford study was based on "more than 43,000 middle and high schools nationwide".

Also, while half of the authors are Stanford research associates, the other half are at other institutions. The publication is a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

And from the preregistration, "Our measure of treatment (i.e., whether a given school has a true phone ban at a particular point in time) is based on organizing sales and shipping data from Yondr (i.e., a company that sells lockable phone pouches)", a company they partnered with for the study.

How .. odd. Is sales data for a single company really the right way to tell if a school has a true phone ban?

nephihaha• 2 days ago

At the same time as a lot of other countries.

asveikau3• 2 days ago

I don't understand the legislative pushes for some of these things.

Schools can already say "no phones during instructional hours". Many of them do. I guess legislating it can mandate the policy across a school district, state, country etc., so perhaps that makes sense.

But others call for outright bans for kids, all the time. Parents can also restrict usage or set rules for appropriate use. Many do.

throwa356262• 2 days ago

Have you talked to a teacher lately?

asveikau3• 2 days ago

I'm the primary caretaker to two kids. So yes.

Rebelgecko2• 2 days ago

Parents are responsible for a surprisingly large fraction of the notifications kids get at school

vitro2• 2 days ago

But if kids refuse to put their phones away during classes, teachers have no right to take them since they are the kids' personal property. And yes, it is in the school rules that you cannot use your phone during class.

My SO teaches English and struggles with it permanently. Kids are on their phones and not paying attention to the lecture. And no support from the headmaster. Other teachers claim they do not have the problem to save face, but then you talk to an expat teacher who was in their class for observation and hear something else.

whateveracct• 2 days ago

But if kids refuse to put their phones away during classes, teachers have no right to take them since they are the kids' personal property. And yes, it is in the school rules that you cannot use your phone during class.

Is this true? When I was in high school, teachers could take away your phones.

cyberax8• 2 days ago

Parents can also restrict usage or set rules for appropriate use. Many do.

If you talk with teachers, some of them complain that kids are on the phone with _parents_ during the class time. And that parents loudly complain to the headmaster if the teacher tries to prevent their child from speaking to them.

Yes, it sounds crazy, but it's true.

flatline• 2 days ago

I don't understand how people fail to understand how public policy works. You can tell people to do something and they may or may not ignore you depending on how you say it, and what incentives and penalties you provide.

Being a parent or a teacher puts you in a position of fighting multi-billion dollar corporate interests that are trying to capture your kids' attention. It's also fighting their very successful advertising campaigns that makes kids, just like adults, feel FOMO for not having the latest gadgets, or access to the same social media outlets as their peers.

Any public policy trying to counter this needs some weight behind it, and a strong consensus as to what we value as normative behavior in society.

asveikau3• 2 days ago

It's also fighting their very successful advertising campaigns

If you want to talk about successful advertising campaigns, things like age verification laws are actually being lobbied by Meta. In other words, Meta wants to do this and is spending money to make it happen. That should make you suspicious.

Being a parent

I am a parent. I really hate it when people pull out this "parents say this ..." crap as if it's a shortcut to winning an argument. They don't want to have a discussion on the merits. A lot of the people pulling out that line seem to be childless, if it matters.

HtmlProgrammer• 2 days ago

We were told no phones in schools. I used my phone. They confiscated it for 2 weeks. I was like yeah fair enough.

I don’t understand why this isn’t done now?

criddell2• 2 days ago

My kids were basically required to have a phone for school. In theory they could use a laptop for everything but in practice it was assumed you had a phone.

They were supposed to use the calendar for assignments (and were given time to use the calendar), the teacher would tell them to take a picture of the white board with their homework assignment on it, and they used some private app (don't know the name of it) for messaging the teacher.

This was a few years ago though, so maybe now the tide has turned?

Edit: The rules have changed:

https://tea.texas.gov/taa-letters/implementation-texas-house...

tyrust• 2 days ago

This is pretty wild, I had no idea any school was like this. What grade and area was this in? Public school?

RiverStone• 2 days ago

That’s actually pretty cool if they’re being taught to use the organizational tools of the phone.

I’m strongly against phones in school, but as a child myself, I was extremely unorganized. And did not get my act together fully until college, when I had a simple laptop with a calendar app where I could plan out all my classes, assignments, etc.

Markoff3• 2 days ago

that would be illegal right now, kid/parents can call police you stole their phone and you would be in trouble with police, any school rule isn't above the law, which is why there must be confiscation option clearly mentioned in the smartphone ban law

Aerroon6• 2 days ago

Do we have any actual evidence that this significantly improves things?

For example, can we expect Czech PISA scores to go up by 50 points from this change?

Or is this one of those "it feels like it should be good, therefore it's good"? Or maybe "we asked a bunch of people whether they think it's good and they said yes"?

You've got to remember that measures like this are limiting people's freedoms, so they need to provide measurable improvements.

armchairhacker3• 2 days ago

They’re limiting freedom of children in school, who already don’t have the freedom to ignore other school policies.

Studies show phone bans help school performance, albeit not by much immediately, but there’s not much upside.

Aerroon6• 1 day ago

Can any of these studies actually show measurable results in something like PISA? Because "studies show" during the replication crisis is not convincing when the effect doesn't seem to show up in actual test scores.

You can easily see the effect of COVID in PISA scores for example.

cromka3• 2 days ago

There's been several pilots that prove this being very effective. Czechia is not first doing this.

Aerroon6• 1 day ago

Great - let's hear the measurable benefits then.

How much higher will Czechia's score be on the next PISA test based on this?

France:

Mobile phones have been prohibited for students from 3 to 15 years of age, since September 2018, although they were first banned in classroom time in 2010.

French PISA results for math, science, reading:

* 2022: 474, 487, 474

* 2018: 495, 493, 493

* 2015: 493, 495, 499

* 2012: 495, 499, 505

* 2009: 497, 498, 496

I'm really impressed by the improvements of nothing.

simlevesque• 2 days ago

If something is hard to measure, is it automatically bad in your eyes ?

the__alchemist• 2 days ago

This was my takeaway. I'm imagining arguments against mitigating climate change along the same lines.

hamper6535• 2 days ago

You've got to remember that measures like this are limiting people's freedoms

Children’s freedoms ought to be limited, yes.

cael450• 2 days ago

"This law might force kids into doing something other than whatever they want, whenever they want, with zero consequences. What happened to freedom?"

So many people have wacky ideas on how to raise kids these days. I question the effectiveness of laws like these, but they are worth trying out. And I think a lot of parents in my generation (millenials) need some serious assistance with teaching kids boundaries.

Aerroon6• 1 day ago

Any actual reasons or are we limiting them just because? Vibe based governance?

My parents were sure that sitting too close to a TV ruined your eyesight. Should we get a law that forces people to sit at least X meters from the TV? Personally I'd like to see some evidence first, instead of "but we must limit freedoms".

cyberax8• 2 days ago

ALL modern electronics should be banned from regular classrooms, up to and including projectors. We now have evidence that at _best_ it does not help. At worst it's actively harming students.

(yes, yes, with obvious exemptions for special needs, computer science classes and so on).

npunt• 2 days ago

The ubiquitous availability of smartphones also limits kids freedom. It creates a very particular style of interaction with peers where quitting means you are left out. That means kids are subject to apps that prey on insecurities, have extremely addictive properties, force feed constant doomerism messaging on them, etc just to stay connected. Another way to look at it is it’s a tax on the joy and freedom of being a kid.

This is a freedom-from / freedom-to distinction. Once you look at kids as a social group rather than as a single individual I think you can come to very different conclusions about what is on balance healthier.

perfunctory• 2 days ago

Forcing kids to go to school is already limiting their freedom

Aerroon6• 1 day ago

Because we're already limiting their freedom we should limit their freedom some more?

What logic is this?

sajithdilshan• 2 days ago

You've got to remember that measures like this are limiting people's freedoms, so they need to provide measurable improvements

I think people like you are the reason I’m a strong supporter of the concept that people should pass an evaluation and get a permit to have a child.

Of course the freedom of choice for children is limited because their brains are not mature enough to make an educated decision and quite gullible. That’s why it’s illegal for them to drink alcohol, drive vehicles and smoke cigarettes.

eesmith2• 2 days ago

I’m a strong supporter of the concept that people should pass an evaluation and get a permit to have a child.

Of course that, like literacy tests for voting, will never be gamed.

Aerroon6• 1 day ago

My faith in humanity is dropping lower than I thought possible. Do you actually have a reason for why you feel what you feel? Can you give me evidence that doing the things you suggest would actually improve things?

Because to be it looks like you are the gullible ones because you are not making educated decisions. France banned mobile phones in school in 2018. Suddenly some kind of a ban had been in place since 2010. Go look at their PISA scores and see if you can notice any improvement. Because I can't.

How can you even call others gullible when the measures you're talking about don't actually show up in measurements of education systems?

Markoff3• 2 days ago

I think it's more a mental health or social interaction thing rather than expecting improved school results, some studies even show no short term increase in results.

But you don't need study to know kids staring at phones instead of talking and playing together is improvement.

armchairhacker3• 2 days ago

Seriously, why isn’t this implemented everywhere?

quacked2• 2 days ago

This doesn't go far enough, in my opinion. I think all screens should be banned from schools. No TV, no phones, no projectors, no slides. No shortcuts for anybody, no distractions. Everything handwritten. I know this sounds like I'm sarcastically criticizing phone bans but I'm serious.

(Edit: obviously will need some accommodations for disabled students, and computer labs will have to exist for technical literacy classes.)

troupo• 2 days ago

TVs are good when used appropriately. We watched Macbeth for the literature class.

ZpJuUuNaQ5• 2 days ago

How would that be beneficial? We don't need to make teachers' jobs more difficult than they already are by removing all the aid brought by digitalization.

quacked2• 9 hours ago

Teachers' jobs are difficult because they're expected to be behavioral specialists, social workers, and prison wardens. If they didn't have to do that, they wouldn't need to rely so terribly on printed worksheets and PowerPoints.

ronsor2• 2 days ago

Whether those things are distractions depends on what they're used for.

I'm fairly certain schools had projectors a few decades ago, and nothing bad came of it.

You don't really need to ban phones from schools; just ban them in class. I don't know why this stuff is treated as such a big deal. Students should pay attention in class, which means not using anything (not devices, paper, books, etc.) except as needed for instruction.

hamper6535• 2 days ago

Phones should be banned from children’s lives altogether. They have no benefit for them, only harm.

armchairhacker3• 2 days ago

Actually, I benefited from a school-issued Chromebook. I mostly used it for note-taking (I'm bad at handwriting) and homework. Even though it allowed some simple browser games, I suspect it was less distracting, and the browser games could've been banned if the school used a whitelist to make it even less so. Even with paper students can be distracted by doodling and daydreaming.

But I wouldn't oppose banning those as long as the schools provided an AlphaSmart (because again, I'm really bad at handwriting). I think e-readers would be best but those are expensive.

I think banning tools for teachers, like projectors, is unnecessary. I suspect I learned easier from projected computer screens vs. staring at a whiteboard, but anything projected on the screen (e.g. powerpoint presentations) could be passed to students on paper, except movies but those may rarely be necessary.

entrepy123• 2 days ago

Plenty of Palo Alto parents seem to want basically what Czechia appears to be doing:

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/palo-alto-schools/2026/07/10/...

https://www.fournorms.com/campaigns/petition-for-intentional...

https://www.schoolsbeyondscreens.com/reform-proposals

mono442• 2 days ago

Don't they have more important issues to tackle?

shdh• 2 days ago

Ban social media for anyone under 18 while you're at it

perelin• 2 days ago

German here. Have a kid in elementary school and one in middle school. No phones allowed whatsoever. But to be fair: every school in Germany can decide that for themselves. But when we were choosing schools, all schools had similar rulesets. Some event prohibited smart watches.

Markoff3• 2 days ago

Czechia had per school rules as well (my kids school bans them in school premises, which leads to groups of kids starting at phones in front of the school, sad sight), but as discussed yesterday by minister of education it's clearly not effective and still huge part of kids use them during school breaks despite more than 90% school officially banning them.

Czechia was one of the, if not the last country in EU without nationwide smartphone regulation

Btw I can't imagine putting my kids in education system in country where you don't have home schooling alternative to state indoctrination in case you need it. And German 2015 immigration crisis and green deal clearly show us your leaders can't be trusted at all.

shantnutiwari• 2 days ago

Same here in uk-- phones are not allowed (at least in my count yin England)-- and if found are confiscated.

ChrisRR• 2 days ago

I hope that it'll have a positive impact on kids' attention spans

Czechia moves to ban mobile phones in schools from September 2027

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