Should the school day start later so that children can sleep in?

December 11, 2019

• Topical

Katie Farquhar, one of our recent interns, has decided to investigate into this matter.

Earlier this year an online petition entitled “School should start at 10am as teenagers are too tired” was garnered almost 200,000 signatures. This petition came in the wake of recent research suggesting not only that adolescents are dangerously lacking in sleep but that, according to Guy Meadows, a sleep physiologist at the Sleep School in London, “British children are among the most sleep-deprived in the world.” The issue was debated by MPs in February due to the sheer response to the petition, however they concluded that the scheduling decisions lie with individual schools. In order to establish whether a later school start time would be beneficial, it seems appropriate to consider recent studies surrounding adolescent sleep and to delve into the arguments on both sides of the debate.

The most relevant research is based on newfound knowledge about our circadian rhythms – this rhythm is our natural, internal process that allows us to regulate sleep. During puberty, adolescents experience a shift in this rhythm and tend to become sleepier later at night and feel the need to sleep later in the morning. The combination of later bedtimes from this natural biological rhythm with early school start times has resulted in most teenagers not getting enough sleep throughout the week. In this article we will consider why improving this situation would be beneficial, as well as the drawbacks to any attempt to alter the school schedule.

Ultimately, sleep is of vital importance as it is when students are asleep that they are developing mentally, physically and emotionally. Teenagers generally need between 8.50-10 hours of sleep each night and if they are deprived of this, they are susceptible to a large number of health issues including anxiety, difficulty learning new concepts, disrupted attention span and obesity, amongst others. The vast majority of schools across the United Kingdom start before 8:30am and this greatly reduces the chance for students to get a good night’s sleep. Whilst it may just seem that going to bed earlier would solve the issue, countless studies have proven that adolescents’ disrupted circadian rhythms will not allow for them to fall asleep earlier even if they are tired.

The mood changes typical of the adolescent phase are deeply exasperated by a lack of sleep; consistent and sufficient levels of sleep by contrast help to stabilise mood and improve motivation. Paul Kelley of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, said British teenagers were losing on average 10 hours’ sleep a week, making them more sleep-deprived than a junior doctor on a 24-hour shift. Not only does this lack of sleep affect health directly like this, but it also makes it far more likely for students to pick up an addiction to caffeine as the lack of sleep leads them to needing a pick-me-up to feel more alert. This is turn disrupts the circadian rhythms even more and the vicious cycle continues.

Health benefits are not the only advantage to gain from an enhanced level of sleep. Studies have found that students obtaining an average grade of C or lower tend to be getting 25+ minutes less sleep compared to students with higher grades. More recently, in 2017, research carried out by the Open University revealed that delaying school start times for teenagers could have major benefits, including better academic performance as well as improved mental and physical health. They found that when teenage students started school at 10am rather than at the usual time of 8:30am, rates of illness decreased by more than half over a two-year period, and they achieved significantly better grades.

There are benefits to be had if we reflect on the more practical aspects too. A later start would allow more time for a student to fit in a healthy breakfast and set them up right for the day ahead. This may seem somewhat trivial, but reports suggest that around 48% of teenagers skip breakfast and the effect that this would have on blood sugar levels would only exasperate the tiredness from sleep-deprivation. Another important consideration would be that currently many parents are obliged to organise some sort of child-care plan for after school if they work, yet a later start to the day would result in a later end to the day too and may minimise the need for this, minimising stress and costs for the parent.

Having reviewed the numerous ways in which a later start to the day would benefit teens, let us contemplate the ways in which it could have a negative impact. The cons are almost entirely practical in nature but that does not diminish their significance. A substantial disadvantage would be how it would impact families’ schedules. Many working parents rely on the early school start to allow them time to both get their children to school and to also arrive promptly to work themselves. If school were to start later it would disrupt this balance and make it potentially trickier for both parties to arrive on time, especially if public transport was not available or too expensive to consider. In the same way, this change would also have an effect on the teachers’ home schedules as they would begin later, also possibly causing issues.

The overall need to reschedule and rework various aspects of the timetable (for example, organising new timings for school transportation or mealtimes) would prove expensive for schools and this is the primary reason that changes to school start times happen seldom. Another key issue is that a later start time would inevitably mean a later end to the school day. This would make it much trickier for students to fit in school with their extracurricular activities, homework and any part-time job they may have outside of school. The added time pressures could create unnecessary stress that would impact their ability to unwind before bed and potentially undo the benefits that a later start time would yield.

So, is a later start to the school day something to be advocated? It seems clear that the benefits in terms of teenagers’ mental and physical health and their academic performance are plentiful. However, the practical disadvantages to this alteration make it understandably a very hard change to implement. It would seem that more research and attention should be brought to the subject in order to encourage schools to overlook the practical difficulties and put the wellbeing and performance of their students first.

Reference

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/backgrounder-later-school-start-times

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/08/start-school-later-11am-students-sleep

1998 study carried out by Dr. Amy Wolfson, Professor of Psychology at Loyola University in Maryland, and Dr. Mary Carskadon, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

https://uk.style.yahoo.com/mps-debate-whether-school-day-start-10am-help-tired-teenagers-102902567.html