CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Later School Start Times

NARRATOR: For generations, the first bell at most Canadian high schools has rung at around eight o'clock, and generations of bleary-eyed teenagers have shuffled through first period as though sleepwalking. Parents have long blamed late-night screens. Sleep researchers, however, increasingly contend that the culprit is biological. During adolescence, the body's internal clock shifts by as much as two hours, so a sixteen-year-old who cannot fall asleep before eleven is not necessarily undisciplined; he is simply on a different schedule from the adults who set the timetable.

NARRATOR: Pediatrician Helen Marchetti is among the most vocal proponents of pushing the school day back to nine or later. She points to American districts that made the switch and saw attendance improve, fewer collisions involving teenage drivers, and modest but measurable gains in grades. In one widely cited study, students who started an hour later gained roughly thirty-five extra minutes of sleep a night. To Marchetti, insisting that teenagers simply go to bed earlier is like asking them to fall asleep on command. Chronic sleep loss, she warns, is no minor inconvenience; it is linked to anxiety, depression and poor judgment, and schools that ignore the evidence are scheduling for the convenience of buses rather than the needs of students.

NARRATOR: Raymond Ostrowski, who chairs a rural school board in Saskatchewan, finds the research persuasive but the logistics daunting. In his district, a single fleet of buses makes two runs each morning, collecting high school students first and elementary pupils second. Delaying the high school start would mean reversing that order, leaving young children waiting at roadside stops before sunrise in January, or else buying buses the board cannot afford. Ostrowski also notes that a later dismissal would push back part-time jobs, sports practices and the afternoon hours many older students spend minding younger siblings. Coaches in his district, he adds, already struggle to find enough daylight for outdoor practices in the fall. A later bell, he suspects, might simply shift the exhaustion to the evening.

NARRATOR: Marchetti is unmoved. Families, she argues, adapted to daylight saving time and to countless timetable changes before, and they would adapt again, provided school boards gave them a full year of notice. Yet even she concedes that the American results come largely from suburban districts with short bus routes. Perhaps the more honest conclusion is that later starts are a sensible goal, but one that each community will have to reach by its own road, and at its own pace.