Evidence shows smartphones can damage children's wellbeing at certain ages
Government recommends banning phones in grades 1-2, restricting use in grade 3, with exceptions for translation tools and health-related needs. New teacher support includes €10M annual subsidy for educators in underserved areas 70+ km from home, plus extraordinary hiring to fill 3,000 vacant positions.
- Government recommends banning smartphones in grades 1-2, restricting use in grade 3
- Teacher subsidy: €150-450/month for educators 70-300+ km from home, costing €10M annually
- Previous hiring round left 3,000 teaching positions unfilled, 19,000 teachers unplaced
- Second recruitment round placed 2,500 teachers but left 1,091 positions vacant
- Computer science has 86 unfilled teaching slots; history and geography has 98
Portugal's Education Minister announces smartphone restrictions in primary and lower secondary schools, alongside support measures for displaced teachers and foreign students, citing evidence of learning and wellbeing impacts.
Portugal's education minister laid out an ambitious set of changes for the coming school year, announced after a cabinet meeting on a Thursday morning. The centerpiece was a recommendation that schools ban smartphones entirely from classrooms in the first and second grades, and restrict their use in the third grade—a move grounded in what Fernando Alexandre, the minister of education, science and innovation, described as mounting evidence that the devices undermine learning and can damage children's wellbeing at certain ages.
The smartphone restrictions come with built-in flexibility. Schools will be free to adopt them or not—the government is not mandating the policy, only recommending it. And there are carved-out exceptions: students who speak little Portuguese can use phones as translation tools, and those with documented health needs that require smartphone functions will be permitted to keep them. In secondary school, the approach shifts entirely. Rather than top-down rules, students themselves will be involved in setting the boundaries around phone use.
Alongside the phone policy, the government announced a package of support for teachers working in schools that have been starved of staff. A new extraordinary hiring round will attempt to fill positions left vacant by the previous government's failed recruitment effort, which left 3,000 teaching slots unfilled, 19,000 teachers without placement, and 1,600 without assigned hours. The new concourse will be open only to already-contracted teachers and those without the formal teaching credentials—a master's degree in education—required for permanent positions. The government expects to complete the hiring by November, once the president signs off on the legislation.
Teachers who accept positions in underserved schools will receive a monthly subsidy, scaled by distance from home. Those placed more than 70 kilometers away get 150 euros a month; those beyond 200 kilometers receive 300 euros; and those more than 300 kilometers from home receive 450 euros. The payments run for eleven months and will cost the government an estimated 10 million euros annually. The policy targets schools where students have lost more than 60 days of instruction over the past two years due to teacher shortages.
For students, the government is rolling out a program called "Learn More Now," which includes a national assessment of reading speed in the coming year—a diagnostic tool aimed at catching literacy problems early. The plan also eliminates a controversial pedagogical monitoring system called MAIA, introduced in 2019, which teachers have complained generates excessive paperwork. The government will revise how it tracks early school abandonment and is hiring cultural and linguistic mediators to support foreign students. It is also creating a new entry level for Portuguese as a non-native language, designed for students from outside Portuguese-speaking countries.
The scale of the teacher shortage remains stark. Even after a second round of recruitment concluded earlier in the week, which placed 2,500 teachers, more than 1,000 positions remained unfilled. The gaps are sharpest in the Lisbon region and the Algarve. Computer science has the most vacant slots at 86, followed by history and geography at 98, Portuguese at 65, mathematics at 63, and physics and chemistry at 53. The government's moves—the subsidy, the new hiring round, the phone restrictions framed as a wellbeing measure—represent an attempt to address both the immediate crisis of empty classrooms and the longer-term question of why teachers are reluctant to work in certain schools.
Notable Quotes
We have substantial evidence that smartphone use can disadvantage learning and, at certain ages, can harm children's wellbeing.— Fernando Alexandre, Education Minister
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why recommend rather than require the phone ban? Why give schools a choice?
Because you can't force a school to adopt a policy it doesn't believe in. The government has the evidence about harm, but schools know their own communities. Some may need phones for translation. Some may have students with disabilities. Voluntary adoption means schools take ownership of the rule.
The teacher shortage sounds catastrophic. Three thousand unfilled positions?
It is. And the previous government's hiring round made it worse, not better. This new round is trying to learn from that failure—it's narrower, more targeted, and they're being honest about what credentials they'll accept. But the real problem is that teachers don't want to work in certain places. That's why the subsidy exists.
Does 150 euros a month actually convince someone to move 70 kilometers away?
Probably not on its own. But it's a signal. It says the government sees the sacrifice and is trying to compensate for it. Whether it works depends on whether teachers believe the subsidy will actually be paid, and whether the school itself is functional.
What's the deal with eliminating MAIA? That sounds like a reversal.
Teachers hated it. It was supposed to improve teaching and learning, but it became a bureaucratic burden—endless monitoring, endless paperwork. Sometimes a policy that looks good on paper doesn't survive contact with actual classrooms. The government is betting that removing it will free up time for actual teaching.
The reading diagnostics—is that new?
The diagnostic is new. But the concern isn't. Portugal has literacy gaps. This is an attempt to catch them early, in the first years of school, when intervention can still work. It's preventive rather than reactive.
Who benefits most from all of this?
Teachers in underserved areas get immediate help. Foreign students get better language support. Younger students get a quieter classroom. But the real beneficiary, if this works, is the system itself—a school system that's been under strain for years.