2023 Author: Bryan Walter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 22:24
American scientists have conducted a study of the effect of postponing the start of school hours on sleep hygiene and academic performance. An article published in the journal Science Advances reported that delayed start of classes increased students' sleep time by 34 minutes and also improved their attendance, and the GPA in school subjects increased by 4.5 percent.
With age, circadian rhythms shift, postponing the optimal time for going to sleep and waking up to later hours. This happens most actively during adolescence. In addition, delayed bedtime is also influenced by the need for young people to maintain social life and interests outside of school hours. However, most school schedules require students to get up early, which often prevents them from getting the 8-10 hours of sleep they need for their age.
Lack of sleep can negatively affect all cognitive processes, especially memory and attention, which are necessary for successful learning. Many schools, therefore, are trying to postpone starting times or transfer secondary school students to their second shift. However, no empirical evidence has yet been obtained for the effectiveness of such measures.
Scientists have decided to do this under the leadership of Gideon Dunster from the University of Washington. They tracked tenth graders at two Seattle schools that postponed their start times from 7:50 am to 8:45 am during the 2016-2017 school year. In the spring of 2016, while the start time had not yet been rescheduled, 94 tenth-graders took part in the study, and 84 the next year. All students during the study had to wear an activity tracker and keep a sleep diary (to check the tracker's data). In addition, the researchers also collected information on schoolchildren's sleepiness, chronotype, and symptoms of depression.
Analysis of the data showed that students who started their lessons one hour late did not go to bed later than their predecessors with the standard start time of lessons, but at the same time they got up later: the average sleep time on weekdays was 34 minutes higher. Weekend sleep patterns did not differ much between the groups.
Difference in sleep patterns for schoolchildren in 2016 and 2017 on weekdays and weekends
In addition, tenth graders scored higher in 2017: their GPA (on a scale of 0 to 100 percent) was 4.5 percent higher than their predecessors. On the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, tenth graders in 2016 received 7 points, and tenth graders in 2017 - 6 points (the higher the score, the more sleepiness). In addition, attendance improved, but only in one school - Franklin High School: on average, after the postponement of the start of lessons, schoolchildren missed 1.9 days less, and there were 1.9 fewer cases of being late by one student.
Work shows that delayed start times can be beneficial for students by increasing sleep time, improving grades, and increasing attendance. However, for further verification in the future, it will be necessary to conduct a similar experiment on the same sample of students with a control group. In addition, despite the validity of the methods used, the sample should be increased in the future.
More recently, another larger study found that sleep deprivation may be associated with risky behaviors in adolescents. Among 65,000 schoolchildren, those who slept less than eight hours were more likely to experience dangerous behaviors and bad habits.
