A TOUGH CALL ON SMARTPHONES

NOW that so much learning is online, you may tear your hair out trying to work out if your child is aimlessly surfing the web — or genuinely swotting up on GCSE genetics.

The best approach, say experts, is to help your child recognise for themselves how distracting mobile phones can be.

A few bracing statistics may also help, adds learning psychologist Bradley Busch.

He says: ‘A recent review found students who use their phones in school do up to 14 per cent worse in their exams than those who don’t.’

Indeed, for the best revision, phones shouldn’t even be in the room. One study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that even if set to silent, airplane mode or switched off, phones still dramatically reduced students’ working memory and problem-solving skills.

So offer — don’t insist — to do your child a favour by taking their phone away while they revise. They can always catch up in their scheduled breaks.