Forum: Have a system-wide pilot to test later school start times
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The Ministry of Education (MOE) recently said in a parliamentary reply that Primary 5 and Secondary 3 students averaged about seven hours of sleep on school days based on the results of its 2025 survey – a slight improvement from 2023.
While they are right to promote healthier routines, the biological sleep patterns of adolescents inherently conflict with early school start times.
MOE already allows schools to adopt later or staggered start times. However, this is not about individual schools, but a system-wide coordination problem that schools do not control.
A later start in one school can shift demand for buses and trains, alter schedules for transport providers serving multiple schools, or transfer the burden to households who may not have flexible work and care arrangements.
Can a later start time work across a connected school, transport, care and employment ecosystem?
I would like to suggest a system-level pilot to test out later school start times, with a small number of schools taking part. These pilots should be designed in partnership with the Land Transport Authority, public transport operators, parents, student-care providers, co-curricular and enrichment providers, and relevant local agencies.
Employer groups should also be engaged, with particular attention to households with fixed or shift-based work arrangements.
The pilot can be evaluated against actual sleep gained, student well-being and attendance, public transport loads and local congestion, co-curricular participation, operational effects on schools and providers, and distributional effects on working households.
The aim is not to impose a single national timetable, but to determine whether Singapore can give adolescents more sleep without merely shifting the cost elsewhere.
Tok Wei Sin
