Hangzhou No 11 Middle School has asked students to store their phones in smart lockers before entering their classroom since last September, local media outlets reported on March 30.
The lockers are embedded with a digital management system and have separated checks that are labeled with student names. Each student has to put their phones in the corresponding check before going to class. When the class is over, students can get their phones back by having their faces scanned.
At the beginning of this year, the national education authorities released a notice stating that the students should leave their phones outside of the classroom if they were authorized to take phones to school.
"Some students take public transportation to school, so they need to use their phones to go to school and back home, so we allow students to take their phones to school," said Yuan Dan, director of the department of students' affairs at Hangzhou No 11 Middle School. "However, they should have permission from their parents who must submit a written application."
The same digital management system was first adopted by the school in April 2017 and students' ID cards, a kind of electronic cards widely used in Chinese schools, were gradually weeded out.
Students can also scan their faces to order meals, borrow books, and make purchases. According to a staff member of the school's canteen, it now takes an average of nine seconds for a student to get a meal.
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