School start times and their association with rurality in British Columbia, Canada: An environmental scan.

Abstract

Study objectives: Since later school start times are associated with increased sleep duration, our objectives were to identify mean school start times, the proportion of schools that start at 08:30 am or later, and determine if rurality was associated with school start times.

Methods: We conducted web searches for start times of 1759 standard schools in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Schools were categorized as elementary, elementary-middle, middle, middle-high, or high school and linked to an Index of Remoteness. We calculated descriptive statistics and used Analysis of Variance to assess for start time differences by grade category. We used Spearman's rank-order correlation to assess if there was a relationship between start time and rurality.

Results: We found start times for 1553 (88.2%) of the included schools. The mean start time was 08:40 am (SD = 0:15) and ranged from 07:10 am to 09:45 am. There was a significant effect of grade category on start time, F (5, 1600) = 6.03, p < .001, η ² =.02, 95% CI [.006, .031] such that elementary-middle schools started significantly earlier (M = 08:34 am, SD = 0:17) than other grade categories. Overall, 1388 (86.4%) schools started at 08:30 am or later. Rurality was significantly correlated with school start time (r = -.198), such that more rural schools started earlier.

Conclusions: For the most part, school start times in BC meet recommendations that support childhood and adolescent sleep. Future research is needed to understand factors that promote the successful implementation of delayed school start times.