Phones are being banned in Portuguese schools up to year 9, and schools get a term to adjust
Portugal is extending its school phone ban to every pupil up to year 9, in force from 1 January 2027. Who it covers, what the exceptions are and what head teachers are reporting.
The rule already existed for the youngest pupils. Now it moves up the school. The government has decided to extend the classroom phone ban to every pupil up to year 9, through a change to the pupil statute, and it has deliberately avoided dropping the whole thing on schools overnight.
When does the phone ban start?
On 1 January 2027. The first term of the coming school year works as a run-up, giving schools time to sort out the practicalities, from lockers to pocket rules, before the measure actually bites. The small print sits in the amended pupil statute published by the Ministry of Education.
Which pupils does the ban cover?
Until now it applied from year 1 through year 5. It will now stretch across the whole of compulsory schooling up to year 9, which pulls the entire lower secondary stage in. Exceptions remain for properly documented health situations, typically pupils who need a phone to monitor a medical condition.
Why is the government extending it now?
Two reasons, neither of them a hunch. The first is the international drift, in a year when half of Europe tightened the screw on children’s screens and France moved to bar under-15s from social media. The second is a survey of head teachers, and that is where the numbers get interesting.
In schools where phones stopped coming through the gate entirely, heads reported socialising up 36% compared with schools running no restriction at all. Where the limit was only partial, the improvement stopped at 16%. The word that keeps surfacing in the answers is indiscipline, and it keeps surfacing to say there was less of it.
One more detail explains why this landed softly rather than like a thunderclap. Last school year, 52% of lower secondary schools had already banned smartphones on their own initiative, and 82% imposed some kind of restriction. The government is mostly generalising a decision most schools had already taken by themselves.
The timing is not innocent either. The change lands on a school year that was already bumpy, between the second round of national exams and the grading mess that gave half the country a headache. September still arrives with the phone in the pocket. January is when the bill comes.
Image: GualdimG / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
