Late school results in happier, motivated students

Starting school half an hour later not only helps children get more sleep, it can also make them more cheerful and motivated.

ISLAMABAD: Starting school just half an hour later not only helps children get more sleep, it could also make them more cheerful and motivated.

Adolescents undergo substantial shifts in their daily biorhythms, which make it easier for them to stay up late and harder for them to wake up early, BBC reported. On a practical level, this means that the average adolescent has difficulty falling asleep before 11 pm, and the ideal wake up time is around 8 am.

To examine whether a half an hour postponement of school timings might help children, researchers surveyed 201 American school students between 9th and 12th grade before the start time change and again about two months later. Data regarding the sleeping habits and mood of the students was collected.

After the change, the researchers found that students reported sleeping an average of 45 more minutes, and actually went to bed 18 minutes earlier. Before the change, about a third of the students got less than7 hours of sleep a night; this fell to 7 per cent after the later school start time was instituted.

The percentage of children getting 8 hours of sleep or more rose from about 16 per cent before the change to 55 per cent afterwards. Still, just 11 per cent of students were sleeping 9 or more hours after the later school start.

While nearly two thirds of the students were at least somewhat unhappy or depressed before the start time change, this dropped to45 per cent after the changed timings, while the percentage of students who said they felt irritated or annoyed dropped from 84 per cent to 63 per cent.

Before the change, 15 per cent of the students said that they visited the school Health Center for problems related to fatigue, and only 5 per cent did so after the change. There were also significant reductions in students' own reports of sleepiness related behavior, like struggling to stay awake in class or arriving late at school, as well as the percentage of children who said they felt too tired or unmotivated to do schoolwork, play sports, or socialise.

The researchers concluded that a modest delay in school start time was associated with significant improvements in children's alertness, mood and health. The findings suggest that parents, educators and schools could start thinking about the issue of sleep deprivation among teens and the methods of addressing it.