Delaying Start of Academic Day

RECOMMENDATION

The below article supports the idea of delaying the start of school by 30 minutes.  However, we acknowledge the fact that changing bus schedules and other morning activities would be too difficult.  Instead, we are recommending that schools use the first 30 minutes at school usually allocated for homeroom as a time for morning exercise and breakfast.  Both of these activities would help combat the effects of poor sleep hygiene.

ARTICLE

The goal of this study is to measure the impact of delaying school by 30-minutes (8-8:30am) and determine its effects on the students overall behavior and also sleep duration. The hypothesized that starting the day 30 minutes later would increase overall mood and performance by letting students sleep in later. The researchers measured the sleep-wake schedule of 201 students from 9-12th graders at a private boarding school in New England. They took a survey measuring the average amount of sleep a student got when school started at a normal time, and compared this to how much sleep they would get after the later start time was implemented. Image not available.

delay school

The figure above looks at two different surveys, 1=before delayed start time and 2=after delayed start time. It asked students in “A” if they felt too tired to “do schoolwork”, “play sports” or “socialize” and in “B” it asked them if they felt unmotivated to do the same activities as in “A” and it measured the results as a percentage of students in the experiment. This shows that with the later schedule, student’s behavior becomes more motivated and not as tired. In the article it also explains that student’s sleep duration increased more than just the amount of the delay. In fact, it said that students were going to sleep on average 18 minutes earlier and sleep duration increased by 45 minutes.

How did they make sure there was no biases when asking students how motivated they were to socialize? In other words, teenagers are often very cautious about fitting in, and they may not answer truthfully on a survey asking about how social they are.

 

Citation:

Owens, J., Belon, K., & Moss, P. (2010). Impact Of Delaying School Start Time On Adolescent Sleep, Mood, And Behavior. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 608-614. Retrieved September 30, 2014.