Eight in the morning, about thirty teenagers still half asleep who would rather finish their night’s sleep than be in class. This is the nightmare of many teachers during the first class of the day. What if the solution was to simply “skip” that first lesson, and start later?
A study from the Center for Disease Prevention and Control and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests that starting later in the day would allow teens to be more rested. After reviewing the scientific literature on sleep and adolescents, Timothy Morgenthaler and his team selected 18 studies comparing sleep duration, physical and academic performance, behavioral traits, and motor vehicle crashes in teens.
Start later, sleep more
Their goal: to determine whether the recommendations on the optimal starting time for lessons are scientifically based. Several organizations advise not to start the class before 8:30 am. Plausible biological bases are used as support for these recommendations: the researchers therefore set out to verify them by compiling all the results.
The main effect of a late start to high school concerns the duration of sleep: it increases noticeably on weekdays when classes start an hour later. Teens have also been known to catch up on their sleep debt on weekends. However, later classes reduce this gap in sleep duration between short nights on weekdays and late mornings at weekends. A longer night, but also more restorative: delayed classes reduce daytime sleepiness.
Lack of evidence on school performance
In other areas, car accidents are also decreasing among high school students who sleep an hour longer. On the other hand, the correlations are too weak to establish a real link between the start time of lessons and physical or academic performance. Quality sleep helps focus and learning, and teens often go to bed naturally later than in childhood. It would therefore be relevant to conduct other more targeted studies to assess the benefits of starting classes later.
To read also
Teens are getting more and more sleep deprived
Teenage sleep, a real headache
Lack of sleep in adolescents leads to obesity in adulthood
