Later school start time helps sleepy kids
Ask any teenager and they will tell you: school starts too early. Now there is scientific proof – well, according to a study run in a Rhode Island school anyway. The advantages of a delayed school beginning time seems to have been confirmed after studying the behavioral and sleep patterns of the students.
Dr. Judy Owens, an expert in sleep from Hasbro Children’s Hospital, found in her study that even a small postponement in school beginning hours of half hour showed noted improvements in student alertness, general health and mood of students (and teachers too.) Dr. Owens’ findings were published in July 2010 in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
The fact that teenagers do not get the necessary nine hours of sleep at night continues to be a worry for parents and a serious concern for public health officials. Dr. Owens, as well as other experts, tried to convince school authorities to delay school start to address that issue.
To show the advantages of the delay, Dr. Owens ran a study at a Rhode Island school, which postponed their start hour from eight a.m. to eight thirty a.m. Even such a short delay showed excellent results. The teenagers had half an hour more to sleep, clean the cobwebs from their eyes and truly wake up, instead of heading to school like zombies. Or even worse, drive like zombies and end up in an accident.
Parents will feel relieved to learn that their difficulties in waking their teenagers and sending them to school in time are not the consequence of their teenagers’ laziness – they go to sleep late and wake up late because of certain biological changes in adolescents, called a “phase delay,” which happen due to a shift in the circadian rhythm.
Dr. Owens explains that this means that the majority of teenagers have problems going to sleep before eleven p.m., and because they need nine to 9 ¼ hours of sleep per night, the ideal waking up time is close to eight a.m. The things get even worse if the kids are engaged late at night in activities that make them ‘pumped up’, like playing computer games, for example.
Children are not the only ones calling for the delayed school start time. Teachers prefer to start at 8:30 too. Not only because they get a bit of additional sleep, but because they do not have to deal with sleepy, unfocused, and irritable teenagers, who are simply sleep-deprived. It’s quite revealing to see that even 30 minutes of extra time for sleeping can make a world of difference!
Source: New study confirms positive effects of delayed school start times.
