While Vincent does have a point, I think Blanquer deserves praise for his decision. There is no reason for children and young teens to be handling mobile phones at any point throughout the school day. They're surrounded by peers, teachers, and classroom-based technology. Personal phones do not contribute meaningfully to the school environment; if anything, they detract from it by fuelling social media-based dramas and cyberbullying, and distracting students from lessons. From Quartz: "According to a 2015 working paper published by the London School of Economics, schools that banned mobile phones saw test scores for their 16-year-olds improve by 6.4%, or the equivalent of adding five days to the school year. 'We found that not only did student achievement improve, but also that low-achieving and low-income students gained the most,' economists Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy told the BBC."

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