Should School Start Later?

Photo+Courtesy+of+Pintrest

Photo Courtesy of Pintrest

Landis Nadeau

In an attempt to generate greater performance and attendance in students and give teens a couple extra hours of shut-eye, schools across the country may find it in their best interest to look into having a later start time.

With the beginning of the school year upon us, it is safe to say that many students are beginning to feel the change of having to wake up far earlier than summer previously allowed – slow mornings, forgetting certain books or papers, or daily morning trips to Dunks that often leave one late to class are not uncommon during this time of year. This can all be tied back to one question…perhaps school starts too early? An answer to this question can be found within the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Pediatrics, in which they state that schools should seek to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. But why?

These ailments are not merely the product of a schedule change – these issues of sleep deprivation and the various symptoms that accompany it occur throughout the entire school year for teens, and for a variety of reasons. According to SleepFoundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting quality information for better sleep, teenagers generally suffer from these problems due to their own biology. 

Teenagers experience something called a “phase delay”, in which their internal clock is shifted by about two hours. For example, instead of going to sleep at 9:00pm and waking up at 6:00pm, teenagers are more inclined to sleep at 11:00pm and wake up at 8:00 am. This obviously conflicts with many school start times (including ours, at 7:20), and this does not even account for the things that a student must do before physically arriving at school itself.

Teenagers require approximately 8-10 hours of sleep a night for ages 14-17 – taking this phase delay into consideration, a teenager going to bed at 11:00pm and (generously) waking up at 6:30am for a 7:20 start time would only get about 7 ½ hours of sleep, just 30 minutes under the lowest recommended amount for a person their age. This leaves the student tired, at a higher risk of athletic injury, and even at an increased risk of a vehicle crash. On the other hand, a well rested student attending a school with a later start time can exhibit benefits such as:

  • Improved attendance, reduced tardiness
  • Better grades
  • Less disciplinary action
  • Less irritable or a reduction in depressive symptoms

One drawback of later start times is that release times may conflict with sports and after school activities, or that students may not want to be let out of school so late depending upon the number of hours of homework they have ahead of them. Nonetheless, the plentiful benefits of well rested students outweighs this burden, and such a burden can be remedied by proper planning and scheduling. 

In the end, the goal of pushing back school start times is to benefit both students and school – by allowing teenagers to get their needed sleep, later start times are creating both hardworking and well-rested students.