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School start time

Published Date: 03 August 2021 11:30 AM

News Parliamentary Replies

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim, Sengkang GRC

Question

To ask the Minister for Education whether there are plans to re-evaluate school start times especially with most schools currently operating in single-session mode.

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Miss Cheng Li Hui, Tampines GRC

Question

To ask the Minister for Education in light that fewer than 15 per cent of secondary school students get enough of the recommended daily eight hours of sleep and experts on children and sleep advocate starting school no earlier than 8.30 am, whether there are plans to revise the starting time for all primary, secondary and pre-tertiary schools to later than 8.30am.

Response

1. International research has established that amount and quality of sleep is influenced by multiple factors, such as circadian rhythm, exercise, and sleep habits. MOE has also recently commissioned two research studies, on the impact of factors affecting sleep duration and sleep quality of our students in Singapore. This will help us better understand how later school start time could contribute to students' longer sleep duration.

2. Currently, schools start no earlier than 7.30a.m. Schools have the autonomy to adopt a later school start time, taking into consideration factors such as parents' feedback, school end time, impact on after-school and inter-school programmes, transport provisions and traffic situation around their schools.

3. MOE will consider the results of the local and overseas research. Apart from whether school start time should be delayed, we will need to work with parents to improve sleep hygiene, manage the overall load on students as well as their use of digital devices.