How school cellphone bans are playing out in the country's classrooms this fall

New and strengthened policies restricting students' use of cellphones swept across Canada as a new school year got underway this fall. 

Now, about a month into the term, students and educators tell CBC News what they're experiencing in the classroom — from little change to drastic differences.

Students are being more careful about when they're using their phones and stashing them inside pockets or backpacks instead of putting them on their desks, like they did before, said Ishaal Ali, a Grade 12 student in Ottawa.

In April, Ontario enacted more specific guidelines for the fall to underline restrictions first introduced in 2019.

"There's a lot less phone usage in class," she said, adding that "certain apps are blocked, so you can't access them without data anyway."

Even prior to this fall, however, Ali said she found it was largely younger peers glued to their phones, since senior students better understand the value of paying attention and fully participating in class.

"That was just a part of learning how to self-regulate and learning that responsibility of 'the phone or my grades,'" she said.

Senior grades should have more leeway, with tougher restrictions reserved for guiding middle schoolers and those in grades 9 and 10, "who are just sort of learning how to navigate these new high school waters," Ali said.

Cellphone use has been rampant in recent years, Grade 9 student Liam Sache said, adding it was normal for bored students to text friends or scroll through social media in class amid inconsistent rules from instructor to instructor.

"Teachers who are more loosey-goosey about it, they tend to have a less productive class," the Corner Brook, N.L., teen said. "I had this teacher ... she'd take our phones [away during class time]. And that's probably the best I'd ever done in a math class."

Staff at his school began drafting a cellphone policy last year and unveiled it this fall. It's been deemed so successful that the administration is speeding up the rollout. Originally planned for the next few years, it will be fully implemented by November.

The policy's success has also garnered interest from other schools, as well as Newfoundland and Labrador's Department of Education, which is currently mulling province-wide restrictions for its older students.

"If you have your phone out, there's gonna be this consequence.... Nobody wants to have their phone taken away for a month or even the whole day," Sache said.

"I don't fully agree with the super harsh restrictions, even though they may be needed. But productivity skyrocketing? Absolutely."