Mobile phone ban at schools: Majority of the teachers supports the plan!

Mobile phone ban at schools: Majority of the teachers supports the plan!

Linz, Österreich - From May 1st, a nationwide mobile phone ban will be effective in the first eight school levels in Austria. This was decided to make schools in the places of concentration and performance when Education Minister Christoph Return (NEOS) declared. The survey of the Austrian Federal Verlag (ÖBV) shows that 74 percent of the 949 teachers surveyed support a ban. Interestingly, a large number of students also use smartphones as a learning aid, which can be seen from the analysis of Christoph Helm, head of the Department of Education Research at the Linz School of Education. He emphasizes that the perception of cell phones in class is crucial for their use. The ban includes folk, middle and special schools as well as AHS substances, whereby schools themselves can determine how they implement it and where the cell phones are kept during the school day.

background and further insights

But not only in Austria there is a discussion about mobile phone bans. The Situation in Germany shows how penetrating smartphones are in the life of young people. According to a study, young people spend 36.9 hours on the smartphone every week, which corresponds to over five hours a day. However, this also has undesirable consequences. Around a quarter of 11 to 17 year olds receive at least 237 notifications every day, and 24.5 percent use social media risky. The DAK health and the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf have found that this excessive use can have serious effects on physical and mental health.

In Germany, there are already considerations to severely limit mobile devices in everyday school life, with some schools seriously considering a total ban. Previous studies have shown that mobile phone bans at schools in England have improved the test results, especially with low -performance students. The smartphone could therefore become a hot iron in the educational discourse in both Austria and Germany, while the education system tries to create the balancing act between digital education and necessary rules to minimize distractions in class, as krone.at . Further considerations on the importance of digital competence make it clear that there is an urgent need for action in this area, such as Deutsches-schulportal.de