School Start Times and its Implications and Effects in Tardiness

Authors

Cabilatazan, Christian Lloyd

Dayao, Daniel Francis
Luvida, Sheena Mae
Munar, Jewel Princess
Tagalen, Elaine Grace

INTRODUCTION
Tardiness is a problem for most educational institutions and is linked to inefficient use of learning-teaching resources
(Maile, 2017) Various studies have been conducted for school start times in various places. However, such studies are not
prominent in our country, let alone the locality of St. Louis School Inc. (Center). Relative to other researches about
students' academic performance, studies for tardiness remain of the least material (Caroro et al, 2017). This presents a
stark contrast in interpreting data especially that other researches are also localized. This research aims to analyze
different factors of tardiness and its stand in school start times, and vice versa. The research first discusses in the first part
the collated questionnaire results, while further study is based on significant data from previous similar studies, also
presented in this research. In conclusion, school start times heavily impact student engagement and is a significant factor
of the effects of tardiness for the population. While later start times improved the engagement of students and helped in
academic performance (Bastian, 2018), it has not been found that it impacts other elements of this study (e.g. time
management) but presents an opportunity for students to have greater amounts of sleep and mental conditioning
(Danner, 2008). Overall, delaying school start times has more positive effects than otherwise, while earlier start times
pose a great risk to academic performance.

METHODOLOGY
The respondents for this research have been drafted from all the sections of St. Louis School (Inc.) Center’s 11th graders
(Grade 11 STEM 1, Grade 11 STEM 2, Grade 11 STEM 3, Grade 11 STEM 4, Grade 11 ABM and Grade 11 HUMSS), to a total
of 167 samples proportionally distributed. This study has been done in-campus and all questionnaires and data yield to
quantitative nature of data, with all the responses used as is. All sample respondents have been proportionally distributed
into all the sections (6 strata in total). The questionnaire is strictly objective and is aimed to collect the frequency of
responses and hence the mode of the data is the treatment of the data. The mode of all the data are primarily the source
of interpretation. The following are the questions used in the questionnaire. Besides questionnaire results, previous
researches have been referenced to other underlying factors of tardiness (alcohol use, technology and biological changes)
(Wahlstrom, 2014)
60
48

40 32
20 20
20 15
5 5 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
0
05:00 05:30 04:00 04:30 06:00 06:20 06:30 04:50 05:10 05:20 05:50 04:10 05:40 04:20 05:15 06:10 06:15
Figure 1

50
39
40
30
18 17
20 13
9 7 7 7
10 6 5 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1
0

Figure 2

50 42
38
40
30
18
20 10 10 7 5 5 4
10 3 3 2 2 2 1 1
0
07:20 07:00 07:15 06:40 06:50 06:30 07:05 07:25 06:45 06:20 07:10 06:00 06:10 06:15 06:35 06:55
Figure 3

117 48

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Figure 4
*Red: NO
Blue: YES

130 27

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Figure 5
*Red: NO
Blue: YES
 121 40

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Yes 121

Figure 7
*Red: NO
Blue: YES

57, 32%

93, 53%

18, 10%

5, 3%
4, 2%

Once Twice Thrice >3 Rarely/ Never

Figure 8

8 Traffic

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree

Figure 6

9 Sleep Quality

12 Time Management

11 Academic Performance

10 Student Engagement

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree

Figure 9

Poor Time Management Personal Characteristics Location (home and school) Overuse of technology
 143 81 128 63

1, 143

3, 128

2, 81

4, 63

Figure 10

Academic
Academic schedules and
Time Performance of engagement of Health and Achievements Personal
Management Tardiness students students sleep quality of students agenda
126 86 99 89 128 71 97

1, 126 5, 128

3, 99 7, 97
2, 86 4, 89
6, 71

Figure 11

RESULTS
 Most students wake up at 5:00am (Figure 1, f=48), two hours and thirty minutes before the second bell (which
denotes a period of being tardy or late), and a greater number of students prepare during this hour of the day, with
succeeding less frequencies varying from 4:00am to the 2nd quarter of 5am. Wake up times falling to the 5th hour of the
day comprise of 55.76% of total data samples. Wake up times beyond 6:00am only comprise of <20% of the results
(Figure 1, f=27). Figure 2 presents that most students' departure time fall to 6:30am (25.32% of all samples, f=39), 1 hour
and 30 minutes later compared to wake-up times (mode). Most students arrive at 7:20am, 50 minutes later than
departure time mode (Figure 3, f=42, 27.45%). The time difference between the greatest and least frequencies are
miniscule. No arrival time is earlier than 6:00am, 1 hour after wake-up time (Figure 7). 75.15% (f=121) of the
respondents responded to having been late (Figure 7) while 70.90% (f=117) report being affected by the weight of traffic
(Figure 4). Participants of the study by far responded that traffic jams are a risk factor of tardiness (Figure 6). Tardiness
frequencies in weekly basis show the probability of a student of getting late at a central tendency of twice a week
(Figure 8, f=18, 10%, median). Figure 9 describes student perception of the top correlations of start times and tardiness.
61% (f=102) strongly agree that sleep quality is impacted by school start times directly, 57%(f=95) strongly agree for
time management, 41% (f=69) for academic performance and 38%(f=63) for student engagement. Risk of tardiness is
85.6% for time management, 76.64%for the locations of home and school, 48.5% for personal characteristics and
37.72% for overuse of technology (Figure 10). Later school start times, in students' perception, show that students will
have the greatest improvement in health (f=128), followed by improvement in time management (f=126), then
academic performance (f=99), academic schedules (f=97), engagement (f=89), tardiness in 6th (f=86) and lastly the
achievements of students (f=71) from Figure 11.

CONCLUSIONS
Tardiness has posed a great risk in students' overall performance in the academic field, and the consequences
are unknown to many as it is an ignored element by many students (Caroro et al, 2017). Tardiness is caused by
numerous factors and can affect students' holistic wellness in most cases. From the results, it is concluded that students
need a later time to go to school and need to be informed of the great risks of being tardy (Caroro et al, 2017). Along
with natural changes of the students and 11th graders age bracket in general (Crowley et al, 2007), external and
environmental changes also take place which add even more impact to tardiness (Hagenauer, 2009). Biological changes
such as delayed-shift sleeping patterns (Carskadon, 1999) affect wake-up times of the age bracket and hence results
from Figure 1 through 3 are affected. Later start times from other localities have been shifted (Philipps, 2008) and
improved students' performance, engagement and time management. Arrival times suggest the need to delay school
start times. Since the impact of traffic jam is generally significant, results from Figure 9 support the need to delay school
start time. Responses, however, do not show the greatest improvement in tardiness rate but still is statistically
significant. Delaying school start time does not significantly tie to absences and grades (Bastian, 2018). On the other
hand, it may indirectly be affected due to the improvement of student engagements.

SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The data presents varied results from each stratum, and hence the mode of each question result is used. The
difference of the mode and other frequencies give the needed data from each question and its objective goal. For
questions 13 and 14, no measure of central tendency is used, but still used for the study. Hence, further researches of
the same topic should have qualitative data as well as a larger population and sample size since the study is done in 11th
graders only. Schools and universities have to open more researches and studies of the same topic.

REFERENCES
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Philipps, B., & Danner, F. (2014). School Start Times for Adolescents. PEDIATRICS, 134(3), 642-649. doi:
10.1542/peds.2014-1697
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Carskadon, M. A., Acebo, C., & Seifer, R. (2001). Extended nights, sleep loss and recovery sleep in adolescents.
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