Malta eyes Finnish phone-free schools: could our kids survive without screens?

Finnish phone ban brings focus, and chatter, back to school – could Malta ever hang up?

Valletta’s grand-parents still talk about the day the first Nokia brick landed in their children’s blazer pockets: suddenly, break-time hopscotch was replaced by snake hunts on grey screens. Fast-forward to 2024 and Finland – the very birthplace of that Nokia – has told its teenagers to drop the devices altogether. A new national curriculum, rolled out in August, requires every Finnish comprehensive school to lock away phones during lessons, breaks and even school trips. The result? Playgrounds echoing with real laughter, canteens where heads tilt toward friends instead of TikTok, and a 40 % jump in students joining after-school clubs within the first six weeks. Could the same hang-up ever work on our sun-baked islands, where 96 % of 11-year-olds already own a smartphone?

Sliema mother-of-three Rebecca Vella is already sold. “My 12-year-old son used to come home with blood-shot eyes from scrolling in bed,” she says over a cappuccino at Fontanella. “Since we copied the Finns and banned phones at St Joseph’s primary, he’s started surfing – actual waves at St George’s Bay – again.” Rebecca’s family is part of a grassroots WhatsApp group, “Malta Phone-Free Childhood”, which ballooned from 30 to 3,000 members in a fortnight. Their petition, delivered to Education Minister Clifton Grima last week, demands a nationwide “Finnish-style” ban by 2026.

Not everyone is ready to press airplane mode. At a recent PTA meeting in Birkirkara, parents clashed when headmistress Maria Camilleri floated the idea. “My daughter walks home alone; I need to track her,” protested one father, waving his Google Maps like a legal document. Others fear academic backlash: “If Malta’s exams still test rote memorisation, phones are the calculator of the 21st century,” argues sociology lecturer Dr Andrea Xuereb. “Banning them without reforming assessment is like removing ovens before teaching kids how to cook.”

Finland’s magic, however, lies beyond prohibition. Teachers were given extra training to replace “passive Googling” with group problem-solving; playgrounds were repainted with hopscotch grids and basketball hoops to tempt bored thumbs. Malta’s challenge is starker. Over-crowded primary schools like those in Żebbuġ operate on 30-year-old asphalt yards with zero shade, let alone climbing frames. “First give us the infrastructure, then take the phones,” warns the teachers’ union MUT, which is asking for €15 million in playground investment before any blanket ban.

Still, early adopters are sprouting. The independent Stella Maris College in Sliema piloted a phone-locker system in April. Principal Roberta Gafa shows me a corridor of 400 little yellow doors that look like post-office boxes for elves. “The first week was chaos – students actually complained they didn’t know how to start conversations,” she laughs. By month three, disciplinary incidents fell 28 % and library loans tripled. “We even had to buy extra chess sets,” Gafa adds, proudly pointing to a huddle of boys arguing over a Sicilian Defence.

Culturally, the move taps into a Maltese nostalgia older than Nokia. Eighty-year-old Gozitan poet Marlene Abdilla remembers hiding marbles in her socks during the 1950s. “We negotiated friendships with trades – a glass alleycat for two aggies – not with emojis,” she smiles. That oral tradition is exactly what Finnish educators want to revive; they cite studies showing face-to-face play boosts negotiation skills more than any Minecraft server. In Malta, where village festa arguments are still settled on baroque doorsteps, reclaiming the art of eye-contact could even safeguard our dying dialects.

Business is watching too. Local start-up “TalkTapp” has created a rugged NFC card that lets kids tap to message parents via school Wi-Fi without internet access. Co-founder Luke Azzopardi says 2,000 pre-orders arrived after a single Facebook ad. “We’re not anti-tech; we’re pro-intention,” he insists, scrolling through analytics that show 70 % of messages are simply: “Can I stay for football?”

From January the Education Ministry will trial “Finnish Fridays” in ten state schools: phones stay in custody from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Researchers from the University of Malta will track concentration spans, bullying reports and, crucially, parental anxiety. Results are due before the next scholastic year.

Conclusion: Hanging up the handset, it seems, is less about Luddite punishment and more about restoring childhood’s original operating system – boredom, laughter and the occasional scraped knee. If Malta can pair playgrounds with policy, we might yet trade screen time for wave time, one yoghurt-stained uniform at a time. The Finns have given us a ring; let’s not send it straight to voicemail.