The Canadian Press
Allison Jones
TORONTO–Cellphones will be banned in Ontario classrooms during instructional time, starting in September.
Education minister Lisa Thompson said in a statement today that a formal announcement is coming soon.
“Ontario’s students need to be able to focus on their learning–not their cellphones,” she wrote.
“By banning cellphone use that distracts from learning, we are helping students to focus on acquiring the foundational skills they need like reading, writing, and math,” she noted.
Some schools already have similar policies, but the province will issue a directive to all public schools for the 2019-20 school year, government sources told The Canadian Press.
How to enforce the ban would be up to individual boards and schools.
Exceptions would be made for when teachers want to use cellphones as part of their lesson, for medical reasons, and students with special needs.
The Tory government conducted education consultations last year and while input on the sex-education curriculum dominated headlines, feedback also was gathered on a potential classroom cellphone ban.
About 97 percent of respondents favoured some sort of restriction on phones in class.
“It was the closest thing we got in our consultation to unanimity,” one source said.
The Progressive Conservatives had proposed such a ban in their platform during last year’s election campaign.
The Ontario Public School Boards’ Association did not provide comment today but in its submission to the government consultations, it had urged the province to continue allowing school boards to make their own decisions.
“Students need to be discerning digital citizens and opportunities should be provided within the curriculum to allow students to safely explore various uses and risks of technology in an intentionally-guided and supportive environment,” the association wrote.
“Schools and teachers have well-established limits and boundaries with regard to cellphone use in schools and the classroom, similar to other classroom expectations, which are designed to create positive learning environments,” it noted.
The association added many school boards have policies that allow students to bring their own devices into the classroom for educational purposes.
“In the classroom, students will use devices responsibly, and only with the permission and direction of the teacher or other staff member,” the Peel District School Board’s policy says.
The Ontario ban would not preclude teachers from using devices as part of instruction.
The Toronto District School Board used to have a cellphone ban but reversed it after four years to let teachers dictate what works best for their classrooms.
The board previously has said that enforcing an outright ban was next to impossible, and said that to curb technology use would be to place limits on educational opportunities, as well.
A 2015 London School of Economics and Political Science paper found that “student performance in high stakes exams significantly increases” with a ban on mobile phones.
The improvements largely were seen among the students who normally were the lowest achieving.
“This suggests that restricting mobile phone use can be a low-cost policy to reduce educational inequalities,” the study found.
