Quebec's mobile device ban in schools: what Ministerial Order 2025-08 means for family-school communication

Quebec took a regulatory step that other provinces had been watching for years. On August 25, 2025, the Minister of Education signed Ministerial Order 2025-08, making the ban on personal mobile devices binding for all students in the public school network, from preschool through secondary [CSSDM FAQ, 2025].

What exactly does Order 2025-08 prohibit?

The order covers all personal mobile devices: phones, earbuds, smartwatches, and personal tablets [CSSDM FAQ, 2025]. The prohibition applies throughout the school day, including recesses and lunch. Students must keep devices in their bags or leave them at home. This is not a classroom-only restriction.

The order is grounded in the work of the Special Commission on Secondary Schools and Young People (CSESJ), whose final report was tabled at the National Assembly of Quebec in May 2025. A draft conduct regulation published in the Gazette officielle du Québec on July 2, 2025 opened a consultation period before the formal signing [Gazette officielle du Québec, July 2, 2025].

The covered public network includes school service centres (CSS) serving students from 4-year preschool through Secondary 5. Private schools are not subject to the order, though several adopted similar policies voluntarily.

What does this ban change for family communication?

Before the order, some teachers and school administrators used students' devices as an informal relay for family communications: students passed along information verbally, received text confirmations, or checked their phones after school to relay messages to parents.

That informal channel no longer works under Order 2025-08. Communication between the school and the family must now go through channels that adults control directly, without passing through the student's device.

This constraint affects three routine communication categories. Attendance and absence confirmations must be handled directly between the parent and the school. Classroom updates (field trips, events, schedule changes) must reach parents without waiting for the student to relay them at the end of the day. Urgent communications must follow a separate, reliable, and documented channel.

Quebec's Act to Modernize Legislative Provisions Respecting the Protection of Personal Information (Law 25) adds a compliance dimension. Any school-family communication platform used by a CSS must be registered with that CSS as a third-party service and, where it processes personal information, must have undergone a privacy impact assessment. Before September 2026, every school principal should confirm with their CSS that the platform used for routine parent updates appears on that register. A consumer-grade app that has not been assessed puts the CSS at compliance risk.

LinoClass was designed for exactly this context: teacher-broadcast communication with no student account, Canadian-hosted infrastructure, and an architecture aligned with Law 25 requirements. Parents receive updates, teachers control the messages, and no student device is part of the communication chain.