Later school start times for teenagers

School start times are a hot issue these days. Particularly, letting teenagers start school later, to match their natural pattern of sleeping in later than younger kids. This report is about a survey done at the University of Michigan where researchers asked parents how they felt about later school start times. Below is a figure from the report that shows some of the results of the survey.

Most of the parents (88%) said their teens currently have a start time before 8:30 a.m. Among these parents, 27% of parents would support a school start of 8:30 a.m. or later only if it did not impact the school budget, and 24% would support a later start time regardless of impact on the school budget. Less than one-half (49%) of the parents do not support a later school start time.

American Pediatric Association "Let Them Sleep" statement

The American Pediatric Association recently released a statement that middle and high school students start school at 8:30 AM or later. Sleep-related research supports the later school start time so that adolescents can get more sleep per night. The recommended amount of sleep for teenagers is 8.5 to 9 hours per night, with the majority of teens not getting close to that. Chronic sleep deprivation has been linked with obesity, diabetes, mental health problems, and reduced academic performance.

The statement goes on to explain that teens lack of sleep is complex and involves homework, extracurricular activities, after-school jobs and use of technology that can keep them up late on week nights. So just delaying school start times may not improve teens' sleep duration if other lifestyle changes are not made. The most obvious one is restricting screen time at night.

Home schooled teens get more sleep

There has been much criticism of school start times. Elementary school children start the latest and high school students start the earliest. But this goes against our sleep biology - young children get up earliest and teenagers sleep later. Here is a study showing that home schooled teens get about 1.5 hours more sleep per night than those students in public or private schools. In fact 55% of home schooled teens got enough sleep versus 25% of public / private school teens.