The council of the Bitola municipality has adopted mayor Toni Konjanovski's initiative to restrict phones in the municipality's primary and secondary schools during lessons. Not confiscated, not banned outright - switched off or on silent and left in a designated place, according to the rules and code of each school.

Exceptions are envisaged for pupils who need a phone for health or other justified reasons, and for urgent situations. Use is also allowed with a teacher's approval, when the phone serves educational purposes.

"If phone use during lessons is restricted, pupils would show far better results," Konjanovski says. He points out that although mobiles are part of modern daily life, using them uncontrolled at school can affect attention, concentration and achievement.

The municipality adopts, the state stays quiet

That is the most interesting part of this story, and nobody said it out loud. Whether a pupil can hold a phone during class is a question for the education system, not for local government. France regulated it nationally. So did the Netherlands. Here it is settled by one city's council, while every other pupil in the country is left with their own school's code of conduct - if that school has one.

The result is predictable: a pupil in Bitola will leave the phone in a box, a pupil in the neighbouring town may not. Same country, same curriculum, two different rules for the same lesson.

What the initiative does not solve

The wording "according to the rules and code of each school" returns responsibility to exactly where it already sat - with the individual school. The initiative sends the political signal, but enforcement stays with the teacher who will have to collect phones, and with the head who will answer if one goes missing or gets broken.

Without a clear rule on who keeps the device, where it is kept and who is liable for it, a well-meant decision easily ends up as another act that exists on paper and is applied according to inclination. Will anyone at the education ministry notice that one city is solving on its own something that should have been settled for everyone long ago?