Belarusian Schools Begin Confiscating Students’ Phones For Day

Parents are outraged.

Since the new quarter, smartphones have been confiscated from students at the beginning of the school day and returned only at the end of it. This was reported to devby.io by readers.

“The class teacher asked not to get caught, otherwise there will be trouble”

Hanna (names in the text have been changed) has two children: her daughter studies at the school where she is registered, and her son, a senior in high school, studies at the gymnasium.

“At the gymnasium, there was talk about confiscating phones for a day back in autumn, but at school, no one warned parents about anything, so we thought that this was an initiative exclusively of the gymnasium. And yet, since January 8, both of my children, having come home from school, shared the news: class teachers take phones in the morning and return them only before the children go home,” Hanna said.

Alena has one child, he is in the 8th grade.

“We were told at the parents' meeting last semester that children's phones are supposed to be taken away. But no one has done this yet.”

Why — “a number of issues have not been resolved,” answers a reader of devby.io:

“For example, how to ensure the safety of gadgets — after all, some kind of box is needed that will be locked with a key and stored somewhere. This box should also reliably protect phones from cracks, scratches and other “injuries”. “Who will be held responsible if at the end of another day the teacher opens the box — and one of the phones has a broken screen?” — this was the first question asked at the meeting. And there was no clear answer to it. Well, “who is paying for this banquet” is also an important question. Most of the parents in my son's class say that they do not need this at all. So why should we spend money on this?”

Alena says that her son's classmates turn off their phones before classes and hide them in the bottom of their backpacks.

“The class teacher asked them not to get caught or she would get into trouble. She also warned that inspections were possible the following month — and then she would definitely take away everyone's devices.”

Siarhei’s daughter is in the 2nd grade of the same school where his wife works as a teacher.

“According to my wife, they only collect smartphones — this does not apply to push-button “dialers” without the Internet. Schools see two problems: the first is that children play games on their phones, and not only during breaks, but sometimes even in class. And the second is that they google answers and copy them. The math teacher said that she changed numbers in an independent work assignment for the sake of an experiment, and the students did not even notice — they just copied everything off the websites with ready-made solutions.

Siarhei agrees that the problem should be somehow solved, “after all, we send children to school to study”. But how?

“If a child wants to cheat, they will hand over another phone — a non-working one. My wife told me that this also happens.”

“The educational process turns into a hunt for phones”

The initiative to hand over phones in Belarusian schools is actively discussed in social media. Some users (including teachers) write that in their schools “this does not happen.” But many commenters say their schools practice such things. In the comments, it even turns out that in some Belarusian schools this has been the case “since the beginning of the school year”, and in some places — for several years.

Many parents are strongly against taking away their children's means of communication — what if something happens to the parents or the child himself. And as arguments they cite unpleasant incidents from their children's school life:

[My daughter] “called me in tears because she had “bleeding eye”, and while I was driving for 15 minutes, the teacher did not show up in the classroom”;

“There was a situation: they took away a child's phone at the beginning of the lesson, and during the break a classmate pushed him. The child hit himself hard, it was very bad, but the teacher did not let [him] call me and did not inform the parents herself either”;

“A medical worker is rarely on site [at our school].”

Several people admit that they “allowed their children not to hand over” their gadgets.

“I told my kid that if they try to take his phone away, he needs to call me right away and I will come with the police. In the school chat, I answered the teacher that I do not allow the phone to be handed over for the whole day. Only as before: at the beginning of the lesson, put it in the cell on the teacher's desk, at the end of the lesson, pick it up. And nothing more,” writes one user.

And several others report that they have found a way to solve the problem without noise and attracting attention: “[I] told my daughter: hand in the one we don’t use at the beginning of the year and don’t forget to pick it up at the end of the year.”

There are also comments from teachers who write that phones are sometimes needed in class, for example, “for online tests,” as well as for assignments with QR codes, which are included in Belarusian textbooks.

There are also many comments from those who support the initiative of schools to take phones away from students during classes:

“Children are getting terribly stupid from phones. The educational process turns into a hunt for phones”;

“I wish everyone who agrees to work for at least a year in a school with kids who never stick their noses out of their screens, tell teachers off and “know their rights”;

“I worked in a school where children handed in their phones in the morning and picked them up when they left. If they needed to call their parents, they would come to me. We would go to the teachers’ room, and the child would call... But the children didn’t sit at school with their noses in their phones”;

“This has been in effect in our school since today. All the children handed in their phones calmly and picked them up at the end of the day without any problems. And imagine, they communicated, played, and didn’t spend the entire break on their phones.”

“No phones allowed during the educational process without permission from teachers”

In December, Tochka.by asked the Ministry of Education if it was true that students (and even teachers) would be required to hand over their phones. In its response, the department referred to the “State School Standard” and “Safety Rules for the Educational Process” — everything is spelled out there.

The first document states the following: “Using mobile communication devices, Internet connections, music speakers, and gaming devices during the educational process without permission from teachers is strictly prohibited.”

Five minutes before the start of the lesson, each student must set their phone to silent mode and put it in a box on a separate table or the teacher’s desk. The gadget may be picked up after the end of the lesson.

As stipulated by the second document, phones may also be stored in students’ school bags. The documents also do not prohibit students from using phones during breaks. But only in case of emergency — for prompt communication with parents.

In August 2024, the head of the Department of General Secondary Education of the Ministry of Education Iryna Karzhova noted that mobile phones can be used in class, but only with the teacher's permission.

“You may ask: why does a student need a mobile phone in class, what does the teacher's permission have to do with it? New teaching aids, which have QR codes, allow students to access certain Internet resources, to interest a child in the subject as much as possible. You can't put all the information in one textbook, it would be huge and very heavy. Therefore, there are QR codes that allow you to find out more. And with the teacher's permission, students can use the phone in class to access the national educational portal and other resources,” the official explained.

However, in the same conversation, Karzhova advocated for “protecting the school as much as possible from the use of mobile phones.”

You can support the website Charter97.org

MULTI-CURRENCY ACCOUNT FOR ASSISTANCE:

Bank's name: Bank Millennium S.A.
Address: ul. Stanislawa Zaryna, 2A, 02-593, Warszawa
IBAN: PL97116022020000000216711123
SWIFT: BIGBPLPW
Name of the account holder: Fundacja “KARTA ‘97”
Purpose/title of payment: Donation for statuary aims

You can contact us by the e-mail [email protected]