“School-day phone bans improve students’ grades.”

• Beland & Murphy's widely cited quasi-experimental study of 91 schools in four English cities (Birmingham, London, Leicester, Manchester) found that after schools banned mobile phones, GCSE test scores rose by about 6.4% of a standard deviation — equivalent to roughly one extra hour of schooling per week — with gains concentrated among the lowest-achieving students and no measurable effect on high achievers (LSE Centre for Economic Performance DP1350; later published in Labour Economics, 2016).
• A Norwegian study by Sara Abrahamsson exploiting the staggered introduction of smartphone bans across middle schools reported improved GPA and higher rates of academic-track high-school enrollment, with the largest effects for girls and for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, alongside reductions in bullying and psychological consultations. (Working paper, Norwegian School of Economics; widely reported in 2024 — no verified stable URL supplied here.)
• A Spanish study (Beneito & Vicente-Chirivella) comparing autonomous communities that banned phones in schools to those that did not found improvements in standardized math and science scores after the bans, again largest for weaker students. (No verified stable URL supplied.)
• Mechanistic evidence is consistent with a plausible effect: UNESCO's 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report cites research that mere proximity of a smartphone degrades attention and learning, and recommends restricting phone use in schools.
• Survey data from teachers (e.g., Pew Research Center, 2024) show large majorities of U.S. high school teachers report phone distraction as a major classroom problem, and many schools and education ministries (UK DfE 2024 guidance, the Netherlands, France, numerous U.S. states) report subjective improvements in attention and classroom climate after restrictions.
• Because measured benefits cluster among low-attaining students, bans are sometimes framed as a low-cost equity intervention — a finding replicated in at least three independent national settings (England, Norway, Spain).

• The largest recent English study (Goodyear et al., SMART Schools, The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 2025; ~1,200 students across 30 secondary schools) found no significant difference in academic attainment — or in mental wellbeing, sleep, physical activity or anxiety — between schools with restrictive and permissive phone policies. (Study is real and widely covered; no verified stable URL supplied here.)
• A Swedish study of secondary schools (Kessel, Hardardottir & Tyrefors, Economics of Education Review, 2020) found no statistically significant effect of phone bans on student performance, directly contradicting the English result.
• Evidence quality is limited: most studies are observational or quasi-experimental rather than randomized, rely on self-reported school policies, and often cannot distinguish a 'ban on paper' from an enforced ban. Several reviews conclude the overall evidence base is thin and mixed.
• Effects, where found, are small (a few percent of a standard deviation) and often concentrated in one subgroup (low achievers, or girls in the Norwegian study), so 'improve students' grades' as a blanket statement overstates the average student's expected benefit.
• Total daily phone/social-media use appears to matter more than school-hours policy specifically; the SMART Schools researchers concluded that school-day bans alone do not reduce overall phone use enough to change outcomes.
• Publication and selection effects: schools that successfully implement and sustain bans may differ systematically (leadership, discipline culture, intake) from those that do not, and some studies cannot fully rule out that these differences, not the phones, drive attainment changes.
• No government agency or systematic-review body currently states that phone bans are proven to raise grades; the UK DfE's 2024 guidance mandates restrictions on behavioural and attention grounds rather than on demonstrated attainment gains.

72/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

LSE Centre for Economic Performance (Beland & Murphy, 'Ill Communication: Technology, Distraction & Student Performance')journal · 85 · UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2023, 'Technology in education: a tool on whose terms?'gov · 88 · UK Department for Education — Mobile phones in schools guidance (2024)gov · 90 · Pew Research Center — teacher survey on classroom conditions including phone distractionother · 85

• The strongest direct evidence is a quasi-experimental study of English secondary schools: Beland and Murphy found that after schools banned mobile phones, student test scores rose, with larger gains for low-achieving students; the estimated average gain was about 6.4% of a standard deviation in test scores. This supports a causal claim that bans can improve academic performance in at least some settings.
• The mechanism is plausible: OECD PISA 2022 reports that students who are distracted by digital devices during math lessons score lower, on average, than otherwise similar students who are not distracted. Phone bans could improve grades by reducing this distraction channel.
• UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report summarizes evidence that smartphone bans in some school systems have been associated with improved academic performance, while also noting that policies should be evidence-based and context-sensitive.

• The evidence is not uniform or universal. A 2025 study reported by The Guardian found that restrictive school phone policies in England were not associated with better grades or mental health compared with less restrictive policies, suggesting that bans alone may not reliably improve outcomes.
• Much of the supportive evidence measures standardized test scores, not ordinary course grades, and comes from specific places, age groups, and implementation contexts. The claim as written omits that effects may be larger for disadvantaged or lower-achieving students and may be small or absent elsewhere.
• Phone bans can reduce in-school access, but they do not necessarily reduce total phone or social-media use outside school; if overall use remains high, academic benefits may be limited.

78/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Labour Economicsjournal · 92 · OECD PISA 2022 Results, Volume IIgov · 90 · UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2023gov · 88

• A landmark 2015 study by economists Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy (published by the Centre for Economic Performance) evaluated mobile phone bans in UK schools and found they increased student test scores by 6.4% of a standard deviation. The academic improvements were overwhelmingly concentrated among low-achieving and disadvantaged students, equating to an extra hour of learning per week.
• A comprehensive 2024 working paper analyzing middle schools in Norway (Abrahamsson) found that implementing strict smartphone bans significantly improved girls' Grade Point Averages and increased their likelihood of attending academic high school tracks.
• Cognitive psychology research, such as a 2019 study by Glass and Kang, demonstrates that dividing attention between classroom instruction and internet-enabled devices heavily disrupts long-term retention, leading to significantly lower scores on unit exams.

• A 2020 study evaluating mobile phone bans in Swedish schools (Kessel, Hardell, and Karlsson) found absolutely no significant impact on student academic performance, suggesting that the effectiveness of a ban may depend heavily on existing school culture or local contexts.
• Even the foundational Beland and Murphy study found that high-achieving students experienced zero significant academic benefit from the phone bans, indicating that the claim does not apply universally to all students.
• Many educational experts argue that paper bans do not automatically improve grades because they are notoriously difficult to enforce; without consistent enforcement, theoretical academic gains do not materialize, and bans miss the opportunity to teach active digital self-regulation.

90/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Centre for Economic Performance (LSE)edu · 95 · Social Science Research Network (SSRN)journal · 90 · Educational Psychologyjournal · 90

• Some evidence suggests a modest academic benefit in particular settings: a large U.S. study of schools using lockable phone pouches found small positive effects for high-school students, especially in mathematics, although the average effect across students was close to zero.[1]
• A randomized experiment involving college students found that collecting phones before lectures increased grades by 0.086 standard deviations, with larger gains among students who had been academically weaker; this is suggestive but does not directly establish effects in primary or secondary schools.[2]

• The large national U.S. study found average standardized-test effects consistently close to zero during the first three years after schools adopted phone pouches; middle schools showed small negative effects.[1]
• A University of Birmingham study of 1,227 students across 30 English secondary schools found no significant differences in academic attainment between schools with restrictive phone policies and schools without them.[3][4]
• The English study was observational, so it cannot prove that bans have no causal effect, but it does not support the broad claim that school-day bans improve grades.[3]
• Available evidence indicates that reducing phone use itself may correlate with better grades, while school bans do not necessarily reduce students’ total daily phone or social-media use.[3][4]

91/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Quarterly Journal of Economicsjournal · 96 · Wharton Magazineedu · 84 · PubMed; University of Birmingham studyjournal · 94 · BBC Newsnews · 94

• A 2016 quasi-experimental study of school mobile-phone bans in England found average test-score gains of about 6.4% of a standard deviation, with substantially larger improvements for low-achieving and disadvantaged students.
• UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report documented classroom disruption from phones and supported restrictions or bans as a way to protect learning time.
• Later difference-in-differences evaluations of staggered bans (including more recent smartphone-era data) have likewise associated phone-free policies with modest GPA or exam gains, concentrated among girls and lower performers.

• The most-cited positive study largely predates ubiquitous smartphones, so its magnitude may not fully generalize to present-day devices and social-media use.
• At least one comparable national study of secondary-school bans reported null effects on academic performance.
• Gains are heterogeneous and modest on average; high-achieving students often show little or no change, and results depend on enforcement quality.
• Schools that adopt bans frequently change other policies at the same time, complicating causal attribution to the phone rule alone.

68/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Centre for Economic Performance, LSEedu · 88 · Labour Economicsjournal · 93 · UNESCOgov · 90