Manitoba will ban cellphones in kindergarten to Grade 8 schools for the upcoming school year, the province says.
The provincial government will also restrict students in Grade 9 to Grade 12 from using their cellphones in classes, a provincial spokesperson said Thursday morning.
The government said earlier this week an update on cellphone use in classes was coming soon, after Manitoba became the only western Canadian province that had not introduced plans to restrict phones in schools following Saskatchewan’s decision last week to ban the use of the devices in the upcoming school year.
Saskatchewan’s policy applies to all kindergarten to Grade 12 classrooms, and followed announcements in Alberta, B.C., Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia.
The bans are designed to reduce distractions and help students focus in class.
The Opposition Progressive Conservatives had previously called for a provincewide ban for kindergarten to Grade 8 students.
Some school divisions in Manitoba had already imposed their own cellphone bans prior to Thursday’s update, with one taking the restriction of screen time even further.
Manitoba’s francophone school division is set to restrict computer usage for elementary and middle school students starting this school year. It is directing teachers to limit screen time to no more than an hour a day while in the classroom, following the division’s decision to ban cellphones last year in all of its schools.
The Hanover School Division in southern Manitoba embarked on a pilot project last year with Stonybrook, one of its middle schools in Steinbach, Man., to see if a ban would be effective.
The division spoke with principals, the school board and parent councils and found they were in favour of a division-wide policy change for kindergarten to Grade 8, which was already set to begin this school year, before the province made its announcement Thursday.