LONDON, England – A new study suggests “that restriction mobile phone use can be a low-cost (school) policy to reduce educational inequalities.”

Researchers with the London School of Economics and their colleagues at American institutions released a study this month that centers on student cell phone policies and their correlation to test scores in four English cities that banned phones for students at school, Cnet.com reports.

“By surveying schools … regarding their mobile phone policies and combining it with administrative data, we find that student performance in high states exams significantly increases post ban,” according to the abstract to “Ill Communication: Technology, Distraction & Student Performance.”

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“Our results indicate that these increases in performance are driven by the lowest-achieving students,” the paper reads.

Cnet highlights the fact that low-achieving students in the study increased their scores by 14.23 percent after schools banned cell phones.

“We found the impact of banning phones for these students equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days,” Richard Murphy, an assistant professor of economics at The University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the study, told UTNews.

Overall, test scores improved an average of about 6.41 percent for all students after schools imposed a ban on cell phones.

The conclusion is “a highly multipurpose technology, such as mobile phones, can have a negative impact on productivity through distraction,” according to the study.

“Schools that restrict access to mobile phones subsequently experience an improvement in test scores. However, these findings do not discount the possibility that mobile phones could be a useful learning tool if their use is properly structured,” the conclusion continues.

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“The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of whether phones are present. Given the heterogeneous results, banning mobile phones could be a low-cost way for school to reduce educational inequality.”

Previous research showed that about 90.3 percent of English teens owned cell phones in 2012, while the percentage is closer to 73 percent for U.S. teens, UTNews reports.

Some commenters online who are familiar with student cell phone use believe phones have become a serious issue for some students.

“Cell phones are not being used for productivity in schools, especially in Mississippi,” bwaybaby posted to UTNews. “The kids are taking videos, selfies, playing games and texting. They walk into you in the hallways because they can’t look up. I have been told by a student, ‘I can’t, I am finishing a game.’ What??”

JeffMaxinDC questioned the validity and rigor of the study on Cnet.

“I think there should have been more focus on what this study actually evaluated. I don’t think any school allows phones to be used in the classroom,” he posted. “But they were looking at schools that simply didn’t allow them on school grounds at all.

“I fail to see how a properly enforced classroom ban is less effective than prohibiting them on school grounds altogether – and they didn’t even attempt to differentiate between those two approaches. It was a weird study,” JeffMaxinDC wrote.

Others thought the study simply confirmed common sense.

“They really needed a study to figure this out? Yeah, if students text and surf porn during class, I bet it will have a negative effect on grades,” bobby_brady posted.