Students get more time for sleep and meals

[Photo: from VCG]

A move to start classes for primary school students later in the day in Zhejiang and Heilongjiang provinces has received a warm response from parents, teachers and young students.

The Zhejiang Department of Education issued a guideline recently that would allow primary schools to adjust the starting time for classes on their own, with first-and second-grade students beginning no earlier than 8:30 am.

The move is designed to ensure that students get ample sleep of at least 10 hours per night and enough time for breakfast. An education assessment in Zhejiang in 2016 showed that students who eat breakfast every day far outperform those who only eat breakfast irregularly.

The guideline also allows primary schools to shorten each class to between 35 and 40 minutes in the morning because of the later start.

It asks all city-level education authorities to select at least one district for a trial reform this year, and promote it further in 2019.

On Saturday, the education department in Heilongjiang province issued a similar guideline, asking all primary and junior middle schools in the province to allow students to arrive no earlier than 8 am. It also said senior middle schools should ask their students to arrive at school no earlier than 7:30 am.

The two guidelines are believed to be the first such implementations at the provincial level. Before that, a few cities, including Hangzhou, Zhejiang province and Changsha, Hunan province, made similar moves. 

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI] 

(News source: China Daily)