Chinese Education issues orders to regulate students' sleep schedules

The Chinese "People's Daily Online" published today that the Chinese Ministry of Education issued the first order to regulate night sleep schedules for primary and secondary school students.

According to the newspaper, the notice included "further strengthening the management and regulation of sleep of primary and secondary students" with detailed regulations for sleep times and hours, study times, private and extracurricular lessons, and playtime, and homework, exercises and play should not hinder pupils' sleep times and duration.

The sleep regulation order specifies in detail the necessity for students to go to bed in general no later than 21:20, and no later than 22:00 for middle school students, and no later than 23:00 for high school students.

The number of sleeping hours should be 10 hours per day for school students, 9 hours for middle school students, and 8 hours for high school students.

Also, the start of the morning lessons for elementary schools in general should not be set before 8:20, and for middle schools, before 8 in the morning.

Schools are not permitted to require students to come to school early to participate in standardized teaching and teaching activities.

The end date of training for training institutions outside schools should not exceed 20:30, and it is not permissible to arrange homework for students in any way.

The 2020 Mental Health Blue Book “China National Mental Health Development Report (2019-2020)” indicated that 95.5% of primary school students sleep less than 10 hours, 90.8% of middle school students sleep less than 9 hours, and 84% of primary school students sleep less than 10 hours. .1% of high school students slept less than 8 hours, indicating a gradual decrease in students' sleep hours compared to 2009.

For her part, director of the Children's Research Institute of the Chinese Youth Research Center, Sun Chang Sun, believes that the reasons for the decline in sleep hours among pupils and middle and high school students are due to the amount of homework and the slow completion of it.

Watching TV, surfing the Internet and playing games have also become prominent causes that lead to insufficient sleep year after year.