Schools pilot a phone-free day and publish the results
Attainment data is inconclusive after one term. The behaviour and attendance numbers are not.
Forty schools locked phones away at the start of the day and handed them back at the end. One term in, they have published what they found rather than what they hoped.
On attainment, the honest answer is that it is too early. Assessment data from a single term is noisy, and the participating schools differ too much to pool cleanly.
On behaviour the picture is sharper. Recorded incidents fell across almost every participating school, with the largest reductions in the years that had been hardest to manage. Several head teachers described the lunch hour as the most visible change.
Attendance improved slightly, which surprised the research team. The leading hypothesis is unglamorous: fewer disputes migrating overnight through group chats means fewer students avoiding school the next morning.
Parents were the main source of resistance, chiefly over contact during the day. Schools that handled it well published a clear procedure for reaching a child through the office before the policy began.
