UAE schools to start later so teenagers get more rest

 

Mary Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, was in the UAE this week to explain why she believes schools and parents would benefit from the school day starting later. 

"We have to ask ourselves a difficult question. Who is the school start time designed to serve? Is it designed to serve parents and teachers or to get the best out of our children?” said Mr Murphy. 

“I think what we need to see is a call to arms for research funding to really understand the scale and nature of this issue, because templating in what works elsewhere, doesn't work,” he said.

“It can't work. Because what works is specific to a culture and to a population.

“I think we need to see prioritisation, not on transplanting existing knowledge, but understanding from the bottom up, what's going on, what will work and trying to fix it.”