Following recent guidelines on minimum sleeping hours by China’s Education Ministry, some schools in Beijing have started classes up to half an hour later to ensure students get enough sleep. The move has been welcomed by pupils and parents alike, citing delayed class times as a boost to families’ overall well-being.

In the United States, while studies struggle to find substantive evidence that later class times lead to increased student performance, the indisputable benefits of greater sleep has proven a good enough criterion for later school starts, with some schools in Minnesota leading the initiative.

With governments and school districts recognising the importance of adequate sleep for developing children and teens, shifts to later school starts are gaining traction on the basis of improving student health and well-being; a subject of particular importance as students move through the mounting challenges of schooling through the pandemic.