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Up at 5am, children doze off in school bus
Bus pick-ups starting between 5.45 and 6.30am require students to wake hours before what is healthy, safe and appropriate for their still-growing brains and bodies.
Getting up early for school every morning is a tough task for most students anywhere in the world. Add to it the pressure of morning traffic and long commute distances, students are left with no option but to leave their homes even before sunrise.
School Transport Services (STS) has a fleet of 1,000 school buses which serve more than 45,000 students every day. Students in Sharjah are the first to board their buses every morning.
“The first batch students are picked from Sharjah at around 5.45am and it can take around one and a half hours to reach their schools in Dubai. While this is an exception, we try to keep the travel time between home and school to less than an hour,” said M.L. Augustine, Managing Director of STS.
His company has studied the possibility of recommending a late start for schools across Dubai and Sharjah but there are several issues, he says.
“We have looked at delaying school timings but it is not realistically possible. It is only possible to change the existing pick-up timings, if schools and offices have separate starting hours in the morning. Both of them cannot clash,” explained Augustine.
The school buses plying from Sharjah are faced with the pressure of reaching Dubai before the morning traffic snarls, especially near the Al Mulla Plaza junction. Thousands of parents also use their own cars to drop children, which adds to morning traffic outside schools. For most students, there isn’t much choice but to sleep in the school bus
Dr Fabiola Caracseghi, a specialist Pediatrician at Wellbeing Medical Centre Dubai, highlighted the need to allow children to wake up naturally. She said, “One of the most important factors involved in the process of waking up naturally is the increase in ambient light because of the sunrise. It makes much more sense and it’s much healthier to wake up at or after the sunrise, so if this implies starting school later, then yes, children would benefit from it. I am sure many parents also would, if their jobs allowed them to.”
Bus pick-ups starting between 5.45 and 6.30am require students to wake hours before what is healthy, safe and appropriate for their still-growing brains and bodies. Most teens would need to fall asleep by 8 or 9pm to get enough sleep with these hours.
“In the UAE, children seem to stay up late more than in other countries, possibly because people tend to be more active at night, when the temperature is milder. They are constantly pressured to have lots of extra-school activities, which can last until very late. Children nowadays are constantly exposed to “screens” (TV, computers, smart phones, tablets…), also at night-time,” explained Dr Fabiola.
The pressure to wake-up early and get the school bus on time often pushes parents to encourage early sleeping and night curfews on going out.
“A good quality sleep is mandatory for a child’s wellbeing and development, as are the general health status, nutrition, education, proper stimulation, a safe and loving environment. Sleep deprivation obviously increases the risk for a child to fall asleep in unusual places and at inappropriate times during the day. In order to be well rested during the day, a child needs to sleep enough and well,” she added.
The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends that middle and high schools start at 8.30am or later. Today many schools start much earlier, often around 7am.
Anvita Sharad, a grade 4 student at GEMS Millennium, Sharjah, believes the school timings are ‘weird’.
“I genuinely feel that the school timings in UAE are weird. I have to get up at 5 in the morning and come back at 3pm. All day I feel sleepy in the bus and classroom due to lack of morning sleep. I feel the ideal school timings should be from 10am to 3pm so that we can sleep well,” said Anvita.
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