Denmark’s school phone ban would require pupils to hand in their mobile phones at the beginning of the school day and receive them back only when classes are over, under a new proposal announced by the Danish government on Thursday. The measure would also cover other private screens and apply both inside classrooms and in schoolyards, as Copenhagen responds to a sharp decline in Danish students’ results in the latest PISA assessment.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Minister for Education (Undervisningsministeren) Magnus Heunicke presented the proposal on 10 September, two days after the OECD published its PISA 2025 results.
Frederiksen linked the decline in educational performance to what she described as Denmark having one of the most digitalised childhoods. Heunicke said the government no longer wanted to leave individual schools to decide how far restrictions should go.
Denmark’s school phone ban would cover the entire school day
Under the proposal, pupils in public primary and lower-secondary schools (folkeskoler) and independent primary schools would normally have to hand over their phones when they arrive at school. They would not regain access until the end of the school day.
The ban would also extend to other privately owned screens and would cover breaks and time spent in the schoolyard, rather than only lessons.
There would still be specific exemptions. Minister for Education Magnus Heunicke cited children with diabetes who need a phone or connected device to monitor their blood sugar as one example.
The government has therefore called the measure a “total ban”, although it will not be absolute in circumstances where health or other essential considerations require access to a device.
The final legislative details have not yet been presented, meaning the measure still needs to pass through the political and parliamentary process before taking effect.
PISA results put digital distraction back at the centre of the debate
The announcement came after the OECD’s PISA 2025 assessment showed Denmark recording its lowest performance since it began participating in the programme in 2000, according to the Ministry of Education.
The OECD found that Danish students spent an average of 3.2 hours per school day using digital devices for learning, compared with an OECD average of 1.7 hours. Another 0.9 hours were spent using digital devices at school for leisure.
Digital distraction was also widespread. Thirty-six percent of Danish students said their classmates were often distracted by digital devices during most or all science lessons, above the OECD average of 28%.
At the same time, the PISA 2025 data complicate a direct link between phone bans and academic results. Students in schools where mobile phones are prohibited are less likely to report digital distraction, but the OECD says the relationship between such bans and academic performance remains unclear.
In Denmark, 65% of students already attended schools where mobile phones were banned on school premises in 2025, up from 40% in 2022.
Denmark had already tried to make schools phone-free
The proposal also revives an initiative agreed by Danish political parties in September 2025.
That agreement would have required school boards to adopt local policies making schools and after-school facilities largely phone-free. It covered smartphones and other private internet-connected devices while allowing exemptions for health, disability, practical circumstances and some educational uses.
The agreement explicitly stopped short of imposing a complete nationwide prohibition. The subsequent legislation was not adopted before Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called a parliamentary election.
The new government is now using the stronger term “total ban” and proposing a clearer national rule under which surrendering phones at the beginning of the day would become the standard practice.
School leaders question how much the measure will change
Representatives of Danish schools have questioned whether the new restrictions will substantially alter everyday life in classrooms.
Dorte Andreas, chair of the Danish School Leaders Association (Skolelederforeningen), told Ritzau that the large majority of schools already have a mobile phone ban or their own policy regulating phones.
Peter Bendix Pedersen, chair of the Independent Schools Association (Friskolerne), expressed a similar assessment.
The debate therefore concerns not only whether phones should be restricted, but whether making the restrictions mandatory nationwide will improve learning outcomes beyond measures schools have already introduced themselves.
The Danish proposal forms part of a broader debate over digital devices, concentration and education across Europe. PISA 2025 found declining reading and mathematics performance across OECD countries and concluded that technology can support education when used purposefully, while excessive or recreational use during school hours is associated with poorer learning conditions.
For Denmark, the next question will be whether a national school phone ban can produce measurable changes in classrooms where restrictions are already widespread.
