By Cathy Elelman • Published: 24 Dec 2019 • 10:49
MOBILE phones will be banned from classrooms in Madrid from the beginning of the next academic year.
The Community of Madrid government decision to stop children from using their mobiles during class time will affect some 800,000 pupils in the region’s more than 1,700 publicly funded schools from September 2020 onwards.
The Madrid regional Education department said the initiative was aimed at improving academic results, especially among schoolchildren experiencing the greatest difficulties in their studies.
A further objective of the prohibition, the department said, is to tackle issues of cyberbullying in Madrid’s schools.
Children who need to have their phones with them for reasons of health or disability will be exempt from the ban.
Madrid is the third region in Spain to issue a decree to stop children using mobiles in class, following in the footsteps of Galicia and Castilla-La Mancha.
A Spanish National Institute of Statistics Survey published in October revealed that 22 per cent of children in Spain have a mobile phone. The percentage increases with age: 38 per cent of 11-year olds have their own mobile, 64 per cent of 12-year olds and 84 per cent of 13-year olds, while for 15-year olds the rate is 94 per cent.
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Cathy Elelman is the local writer for the Costa de Almeria edition of the Euro Weekly News.
Based in Mojacar for the last 21 years, Cathy is very much part of the local community and is always well and truly up on all the latest news and events going on in this region of Spain.
Her top goals are to do the best job she can informing the local English-speaking community, visitors to the area and the wider world about about the news in Almeria, to learn something new every day, and to embrace very new challenge this fast-changing world brings her way.
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