Cellphones banned in Catalan primary schools and restricted in secondary schools

The Catalan Education Department has announced that it will ban the use of cell phones in primary schools from the next school year, and allow it only for "educational purposes" only in secondary schools.

Primary school is for students between the ages of six and 12, while secondary school is for students between the ages of 12 and 16.

In a text outlining the new guidelines, the Education Department says the use of cell phones "will not be allowed" in primary schools, and that in secondary schools it will only be allowed for "specific authorized educational purposes," if the school chooses to do so.

Therefore, the decision to completely ban the use of cell phones in secondary schools will depend on each school. The guidelines state that secondary school students must turn off their devices upon entering school, and the devices will be confiscated if used "inappropriately."

The regulation of the use of mobile phones in classrooms has been a long-running debate in recent months, but it has been heightened by the recent revelation of Catalan students' poor results in the PISA tests.

Parents unite against early cell phone use

On November 2023, a group of families from Barcelona's Poblenou neighborhood banded together to ensure that their children would not have smartphones until the age of 16.    

Soon, the organization spread to other neighborhoods in Barcelona and different cities in Catalonia through WhatsApp and Telegram groups, under the initiative 'Adolescència lliure de mòbil' (A phone-free youth).   

In a few days, thousands of other families joined the groups, and the main Telegram group now has more than 10,000 members.  

Parents say they are not against the use of new technologies, but they are concerned about its use at an early age.    

They point out that there is a lot of peer pressure to buy a phone for their children, because if they don't, their children will be the only ones in the class without one, which in turn complicates the parent-child relationship.   

Following the uproar caused by the initiative, the government launched a participatory process to gather the opinions of teachers, families and students from all over Catalonia regarding the presence of mobile phones in schools and high schools.