Sleep: For Our Child's Health, Should School Start Later?

Starting school later in the day may help with childhood development, according to recent findings published in the journal Learning, Media and Technology.

A team of researchers at the University of Oxford, Harvard Medical School and the University of Nevada found that teaching students when they were too sleepy to learn could be an easy fix for improving education.

In this recent study, researchers found that students who should actually start school 8:30 a.m. or later at age 10; 10:00 a.m. or later at 16; and 11:00 a.m. or later at 18. Implementing these start times could help protect students form short sleep duration as well as chronic sleep deprivation that's linked to poor learning and health problems, researchers say. The genetic start times were designed to optimize both learning and health.

The findings touch on a series of deeper issues linked to circadian rhythms, otherwise known as the body's internal clock. When the body doesn't get the right amount of sleep, this can disrupt the cycle that reloads just about every 24 hours.

"It is during adolescence when the disparity between inherent circadian rhythms and the typical working day come about," the researchers concluded. "Circadian rhythms determine our optimum hours of work and concentration, and in adolescence these shift almost three hours later."

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