Schools starting at 10am is a waste of valuable time – Student Shout

A petition urging MPs to debate whether secondary schools should start at 10am because teenagers are ‘too tired’ has surpassed 180,000 signatures. 

Do I support this debate? Absolutely not.

Yes, teens’ lives are busy and it is intense revising for their futures, or in some cases, playing video games all day, but to let them start at 10am seems ridiculous to me.

What difference will an extra hour in bed make to good grades?

Teens will just go to bed an hour later at night and it will completely defeat the object.

I finished secondary school in 2016 and came out with some good grades because of my hard work and determination.

Not once did I think ‘I could have done better if I started later.’

I think the main problem with teenagers being tired is bedtimes. I know that students like to stay up surfing social media or watching a film rather than going to sleep, but going to sleep a tad earlier would make a huge difference.

After reading the responses  online, I think most adults are in agreement with me –  and that makes me feel old. 

The majority of responses are ‘wait until they work in the real world’, which usually I do not agree with and I think is an unfair comparison, but in this case, I think it is true.

One school tried starting classes at 1.30pm and finishing at 7pm and apparently found it beneficial. But surely it would encourage pupils to lie in bed until midday and be too tired for homework and revision?

A huge benefit of the 3pm – 4pm finish time is it encourages homework and revision because they do it as soon as they get in.

Would teenagers study from 6pm onwards?

I guess it is worth trying to see if a later start really does improve grades but my bet is that it will make no difference whatsoever.