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Recently published , looking at data from almost 5,000 schools, is a very interesting read precisely because it does not say what either side of the debate might want it to.

It does not show that phone bans are pointless. Nor does it show that locking phones away is a simple route to better attendance, better behaviour, better learning and happier pupils.

Instead, while it shows that the introduction of lockable pouches clearly reduces phone use in school, it also demonstrates that measurable differences in academic outcomes, behaviour and attendance between schools that do so and schools that do not are very small.

Key findings

The report finds that phone activity on school campuses during school hours fell substantially after the adoption of lockable phone pouches.

The proportion of pupils reported to be using phones in class for personal reasons fell from 61 per cent to 13 per cent after locking away the phones, a fall of about 80 per cent.

Yet, after this reduction, the benefits that many may have expected to see are hard to detect. The clearest example is academic attainment.

The report says that average effects on test scores were “close to zero” over the first three years after adoption.

Attendance data tells the same story, with an estimated effect of less than 0.2 per cent, and no measurable effects on chronic absenteeism.

Behaviour and wellbeing

As regards behaviour, meanwhile, the most striking figure is that, after a phone ban, there was a 16 per cent increase in suspension rates, although this effect fades in later years.

The authors themselves describe this as consistent with short-term disruption as schools introduce and enforce the new restriction, not as evidence of a permanent worsening of behaviour.

A new phone policy creates new opportunities for conflict: pupils may resist it, staff may record more incidents because there is now a rule to enforce, and the first few months may feel more confrontational.

The wellbeing data tells a similar story of disturbance followed by adjustment, with subjective wellbeing falling a little in the year of implementation, before recovering by the second year after adoption.

In other words, the underlying picture is one of neither a decisive behavioural benefit from phone pouches, nor a lasting behavioural cost.

It is, in fact, more prosaic: schools introduce a stricter rule, there is a period of turbulence while pupils and staff adjust, and then the measurable behaviour picture appears to settle back towards something much closer to normal - again, not the sort of evidence that allows advocates of bans to claim a transformation in behaviour or wellbeing.

Little change to attention or bullying

The most striking results may be the ones that do not move. The report finds no clear improvement in self-reported classroom attention, and no clear change in perceived online bullying. These are precisely the areas where many advocates of bans might have expected stronger evidence.

Again, the result is not that phones are harmless; it is that removing them during school hours does not, by itself, appear to transform these measured outcomes.

This is where the debate needs to become more mature. A school phone ban may still be the right policy. Schools have to manage classroom attention, safeguarding risk, image-sharing, covert filming, social pressure and the general tone of the school day.

It is entirely legitimate for a school to say that pupils do not need smartphones during lessons, lunch or corridors. But the evidence here suggests that a ban should not be oversold as a single solution to a much wider problem.

The post-school problem

The major missing part of the picture is what pupils are doing with their phones outside school time.

The report itself notes, in its conceptual discussion, that online bullying can occur outside school hours or through other devices, making the overall effect of in-school restrictions uncertain. That is the point schools and policymakers need to hear.

If pupils leave school and spend five or six hours on social media, group chats, gaming platforms and video feeds, then we should not be surprised if locking phones away between 8.30am and 3.30pm produces only modest measurable gains. The school day matters, but it is not the whole of childhood.

The biggest lesson from this study may therefore be that schools need phone policies, but families need support too.

We need better work with parents on bedtime phone use, notification settings, group chat behaviour, social media age limits, online conflict, image-sharing and the daily habits that shape attention and sleep.

A relentless focus only on the school ban risks distracting us from another important part of the picture: schools can create a healthier environment during the day but they cannot, on their own, fix the digital lives pupils return to at night.

Luke Ramsden is deputy head of an independent school and chair of trustees for the