Phones, tablets and smartwatches will be banned from classrooms in the Netherlands from January next year.

The Dutch government said the move is to stop pupils being distracted from their school work.

Devices will only be allowed if they needed for the lesson, for medical reasons or for people with disabilities.

The ban is currently an agreement between schools and the government, but the education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf did say schools were not able to makes changes by the summer of 2024, legal rules could follow.

"Students need to be able to concentrate and need to be given the opportunity to study well," Robbert Dijkgraaf said.

"Mobile phones are a disturbance, scientific research shows. We need to protect students against this."

The ban follows a similar decision in Finland last week.

Will the UK ban smartphones in schools?

In the UK, the Department for Education did run a consultation on whether to ban mobile phones in classrooms in England, but concluded that schools already had their own individual plans in place.

In Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England it is up to schools to put in place their own rules, but in France phones are banned in classrooms following a similar consultation in 2018.(BBC)