Why starting school later is better for students

By Patton Chiu

Image courtesy of Andy Barbour at Pexels

Have you ever felt sleep deprived when you wake up for school? Have you ever complained about school starting too early? If so, you probably don’t realize how lucky you are to have the privilege to arrive at school at 8:25 am. Do you know the majority of local schools in Hong Kong require their students to arrive at school at 7:30-8:00 am? Imagine how sleep deprived and tired the students must be. 

Studies have shown that early school start time is associated with sleep deprivation of students. Sleep deprivation is a huge problem among students, as not only does it increase the risks of obesity, it also negatively affects their mental wellbeing and worsens academic performance. Schools have been trying countless ways to tackle sleep deprivation, from making homework submission deadlines earlier to writing sleep diaries! I doubt if these actually work. How about delaying the start time of schools?

Delaying school start time can reduce the risks of obesity and weight gain in students. 

Studies show sleep deprivation causes people to have a bigger appetite and eat more food that is high in calories and fat, as your body wants to recharge as much as energy as possible within the shortest amount of time. 

My cousin Ryan, a form four student studying in a local secondary school, is a typical example. “I usually sleep at midnight, and wake up at 6:45 am to get ready for school at 7:45am. Since I only get to sleep 6.5 hours, I usually feel sleepy and tired in the morning. To re-energize myself before a day of school, in addition to breakfast, I usually make myself a glass of hot chocolate and eat something that has high amounts of sugar and caffeine,” said Ryan. 

I guess that's why he looks fatter every time I see him.Therefore, by delaying the start time of schools, students will be able to get sufficient amounts of sleep and be properly recharged before a day of school. This reduces their urge to eat food that is high in glucose and fat and thereby the risks of obesity in students.

Additionally, delaying school start time improves the mental health of students as well as decreases emotional problems.

To investigate the relationship between later school start time and mental health, a study collected data on 1,377 students from two Hong Kong secondary schools. One school started at 7:45 am while the other started at 8:00 am. Both schools ended at 3:40 pm.

The results revealed that the majority of students of the delayed-start school spent an extra 10 minutes in bed and were less sleepy throughout the day, resulting in a better overall mental health in comparison to the students of the other school. The teacher reports also indicated improvement in social behavior and relationships with peers, and the students also had less emotional problems as well as showing fewer signs of stress and depression compared to the students from the other school. 

It genuinely surprises me how doing so little as just giving students an extra 15 minutes to rest before school can have such a huge improvement on their mental well-being.     

Improvement in academic performance of students is also a benefit of delaying the start time of school.

Students who get the proper amounts of sleep each night are more focused and are less likely to be late for class, resulting in a better academic performance. However, if a student is sleep deprived, it would be the other way round.

A study found that each night of the week that college students don’t get enough sleep was associated with a 0.02-point drop in their cumulative grade point average (GPA). That's crazy! If you lose 0.02 points from your GPA each day you feel sleep deprived, think about the number of points students would lose if they are sleep deprived for most days of the week.

Someone who is routinely well rested has a 0.14 GPA advantage over someone perpetually sleepy,” said Roxanne Prichard, a scientific director from the Minnesota Center for College Sleep. If a student's GPA can have such a significant improvement if they are well rested, it won’t hurt much to delay school start time by just 20-30 minutes.

I have heard countless justifications on why schools shouldn’t be delayed. The one that striked me the most was to just “ask your teenage son/daughter to sleep earlier”. It seems easy to tell them to just go to bed earlier, but it's highly unlikely for it to work. During puberty, teenagers experience hormonal shifts called a “phase delay” that make falling asleep earlier difficult. Their biological clock is also 2 hours later than adults, which won’t allow them to fall asleep before 11 p.m. Therefore, teens need to sleep more in the morning to make up for the loss of sleep time. Yeah mom, you can stop calling me lazy now, it's not that I have a choice but to sleep late!

Despite the many negative impacts of early school start time on students, why are so many schools in Hong Kong still making their students arrive at school so early?

But aside from that, let's all give a salute to Dr Brown for giving us more time to stay in bed.