Students in primary and secondary schools across China are not allowed to bring their personal phones to school unless they have a real need and their parents make written applications, according to a policy published at the website of the Ministry of Education on Monday.

In case there are written applications, the policy stressed that the students who do bring their personal phones to school have to hand their phones to relevant authorities in their schools instead of taking the phones to classrooms.

In this sense, the schools should include mobile phone management into their routine management by clarifying where, how and who will take care of the phones.

The move is said to protect students' eyesight and make students concentrate in studying instead of surfing the internet and playing games.

To facilitate communication between students and their parents, the regulation ruled that schools should find some measures such as setting up public phones and exploring student ID cards with phone function.

Another major point is that teachers are not allowed to assign homework on mobile phones or ask students to complete homework on mobile phones.

The regulation became a hot topic on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo, and many internet users have voiced their opinions.

Some of them questioned whether it could get implemented as there are exceptions, some said the regulation should have come earlier as students may get distracted by the mobile phones they carry along, some others expressed they are deeply upset with their children's homework assigned on mobile phones, while some others worried that how could they contact their children when they are on the way to school or after-class training centers if the children do not bring phones. 

In many Chinese schools, students are not allowed to bring mobile phones although this is not written explicitly. "Students are not allowed to bring their personal phones to school, and if some of them do so, they have to hand the phones to the head teachers," said Huang Han, a junior high school teacher in Wenzhou City, east China's Zhejiang Province.

As some internet users complained that their children's teachers are assigning homework on phones, which means they cannot refuse their children's demand to use their mobile phones, Huang said she also has a question on whether it's necessary to assign homework on phones, except the assignments such as dubbing which require certain kinds of apps.

It's already a common practice worldwide to limit students' use of mobile phones in primary and secondary schools. For example, countries including United States, Italy and Japan passed laws prohibiting students bringing mobile phones to schools or classrooms.