Estonia eschews phone bans in schools and takes leap into AI

Country at top of education charts aims to equip students and teachers with world-class artificial intelligence skills'

While many schools in England have banned smartphones, in Estonia - regarded as the new European education powerhouse - students are regularly asked to use their devices in class, and from September they will be given their own AI accounts.

The small Baltic country - population 1.4 million - has quietly become Europe's top performer in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's programme for international student assessment (Pisa), overtaking its near neighbour Finland.