[Entrance to Trongårdsskolen high school]
[Trongårdsskolen logo on building exterior]
[Class working at desks]
[64-year-old teacher Bent Povlsen speaking to his class]
[Povlsen speaking to his class]
[14-year-old student Corto Kaal working at his desk]
[Class working at desks]
[14-year-old student Nanna Christiansen studying at her desk]
[Povlsen speaking with Christiansen during class]
Bent Povlsen (interview): “We saw a lot of students losing focus, we saw them lose concentration. They were mentally not really present in school. We saw addiction, mobile phone addiction. And we saw a drop in academic performance, school was not really important, their phones were all important. The other thing we saw was socially they stopped playing, they stopped doing sport, they actually stopped talking with each other during breaks. That was a really sad moment for us as teachers.”
[Christiansen putting her smartphone away in a locker]
[Kaal putting his smartphone away in the locker]
[Smartphones stored away in the locker]
[15-year-old student Sally Jensen putting her smartphone away in the locker]
[Povlsen speaking during interview]
[Class schedule on a classroom wall]
[Notes on a classroom wall]
Bent Povlsen (interview): “It’s been a huge success. Today, we are back to normal. We see happy and smiling students. We see children playing. In classrooms, we see more focus, more concentration. So, we are back on track again.”
[Canal in central Copenhagen]
[Copenhagen skyline]
[Christiansborg Palace parliament building exterior]
[Sculpture of Frederik VII]
[Christiansborg Palace parliament building interior, people walking by]
[Sara Emil Baaring, member of the Danish Parliament and spokesperson for Children and Schools, speaking during an interview]
Sara Emil Baaring (interview): “We know that the students actually are getting a lot of notifications through the classes. They can feel the phones beeping in their pockets, and that’s lacking the concentration they have in the lessons.”
[Baaring during interview]
Sara Emil Baaring (interview): “We have been too eager to implement the digitalisation in our schools. We also made last year, we made a big economical boost to physical books because we can see that a lot of students aren’t even reading in physical books anymore. So, it’s just a way to go a little bit backwards because we have been implementing too fast.”
[Students Christiansen and Jensen using their smartphones]
[Mie Oehlenschläger, independent advisor and member of the Danish Children and Young People Wellbeing Commission, reading report]
[Report, reading: “smartphone”]
Mie Oehlenschläger (interview): “We know that there is a strong correlation between this ability to concentrate and focus and smartphones in classroom. So, we wanted basically to take that off the shoulders of children and get the school back to a non-commercial, also space, and make it easier for the teacher to do what they’re supposed to do, to teach, and also give children the freedom to connect offline and to play and talk to each other and look up at each other and up in the world.”
[Class working at desks]
[Povlsen speaking to class]
[Christiansen speaking with classmates]
Nanna Christiansen (interview): “We talk a lot in recess now. We used to maybe just like play some games on our phones or scroll or something, but now we talk and sometimes also play board games and stuff.”
[Jensen at work during class]
Sally Jensen (interview): “Well I mean, at first, people were kind of like, oh, so annoying, you have to give your phone and they just didn’t really give them. I also think the rules were stricter when it just started. All the teachers were kind of like yeah, you definitely have to.”
[Kaal speaking during class]
Corto Kaal (interview): “People are much more focused, I would say. I would also say I’m more focused because now we don’t have something that keeps annoying us every now and then because somebody texts us or something else.”
[Students taking their smartphones from locker at the end of the school day]
[Students leaving at the end of the school day]
[Trongårdsskolen high school exterior]
[Classroom chairs seen through school window]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.