London, May 19 (IANS): If you intend to score higher marks in exams, then the best solution is to tuck your smartphone away in a locker where it can't distract you, says a new study from the London School of Economics.

Although many parents want to be connected to their children, teachers complain the devices are nothing less than a distraction. Some schools already have bans in place.

For the study, researchers Richard Murphy and Louis-Philippe Beland at the London School of Economics looked at the test scores of 130,000 students in 91 British schools, according to Christian Science Monitor.

The schools had a variety of cell phone policies, which the researchers compared to test scores for 16-year-old students.

"We found the impact of banning phones for these students equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days," the researchers noted.

The researchers found that students' scores increased 6.4 percent when schools banned phones. And the effects were more palpable in case of underachieving students whose test scores increased 14 percent.

"The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of the mobile phone policy," as per the study.

Murphy and Beland's study reinforces that distraction is detrimental to students' test scores, and since smartphones are the latest preoccupation, better keep them away.