End of smartphones in all the colleges of France from the start of the 2025 school year

Since September, national education has experienced the concept of “” “digital break» in a hundred colleges. To put it simply, smartphones are prohibited from students throughout the day. Bad news for those whose establishment was exempt, the generalization of this practice is planned for the start of the 2025 school year.

The digital break is invited in all colleges at the start of the 2025 school year

On the occasion of current issues in the government of the Senate of April 9, 2024, the Minister of National Education was questioned About the digital break.

Worried about “The harmful use” Mobile phones among the youngest, Senator François Bonhomme (LR) specifically asked Élisabeth Borne if the system was going to extend to all colleges from the start of the 2025 school year. A question to which the Minister responded unambiguously: “I confirm it to you. I actually want the digital break to be generalized to all colleges at the next school year”.

Élisabeth Borne also explains that “All feedback [de l’expérimentation] are very positive ”thus justifying its enlargement to all establishments from next September. She adds that the modalities of the digital break will remain to the appreciation of the heads of school, and that its cost “Can be zero or a few thousand euros”.

For information, national education recalls on its site that the objective of the device is double:

• improving the school climate, to the use of mobile phones can harm by making it possible to develop violence (online harassment, dissemination of violent images);
• Improving the students' results, using the phone having a determining effect on class concentration capacity and acquisition of knowledge.

It remains to be seen how each establishment will adapt the system to its own functioning, between firmness and pedagogy.