I’ve written a lot about the trials and tribulations of turning solid research into school policy, but so far most of my work has focused on the United States. Here the way we make school policy decisions is famously decentralized: over 13,000 individual districts and roughly 100,000 high schools all setting their own schedules, with no reliable national tracking of who changes what, when, or why. There is no one‑size‑fits‑all way to schedule classes—or even to schedule schedules.
We see some common themes in places that make successful changes, but getting every school to move in lockstep, even when that lockstep ensures basic health, safety, and rights, is not something we excel at.
In our new book Educating the Exhausted, Amy Wolfson and I explore one of the core reasons: in the US, we routinely ask people who are not tasked with improving public health outcomes to make public health decisions. Too‑early school start times get treated as negotiable school budget items, weighed against matters such as teacher contracts and transportation costs, and not as the health intervention they should be.
But running Start School Later for years has taught me something else: the problem of too‑early school hours is hardly unique to the United States. Start School Later has had chapters in Brazil, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and Jersey, and over the past decade we’ve seen calls to delay school start times in numerous other countries including China, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, Colombia, Germany, Spain, Israel, Canada, Kenya, Taiwan, Rwanda, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand, Estonia, South Korea, and India.
In fact, in the early 20th century, the U.S. was admired for running its schools at humane hours while European countries looked on in awe. Today, the global landscape is even more varied. Schools in some countries run split shifts; some routinely start classes before sunrise; some shift schedules seasonally. And the politics of change differ just as dramatically.
Doing it Differently
I’ve also learned something else: some countries are making changes much more rapidly than we are, often at the snap of some leader’s finger. Consider the following examples:
Kenya—National directive
In 2023, Education Minister Ezekiel Machogu banned early‑morning and late‑evening study sessions and directed all schools to operate between 8:00 am and 3:45 p.m. so students could sleep nine hours.
Implementation has been uneven—a reminder that decrees without buy‑in rarely stick—but the policy itself was enacted quickly and nationwide.
Rwanda—Nationwide shift to 8:30 a.m. school starts
In October 2022, Rwanda’s Cabinet moved all school start times from 8:00 to 8:30 a.m., extending the day to 5:00 p.m.
This was a top‑down change enacted quickly, with little cross‑sector consultation—efficient, but fragile.
Estonia—National regulation: No classes before 9:00 a.m.
In July 2025, Estonia adopted a regulation requiring all general education schools to begin at 9:00 a.m. or later, effective 2026-27, with earlier starts allowed only in exceptional cases.
This is one of the most sweeping national policies in the world. It’s also of the clearest examples of a country treating adolescent sleep as a structural issue rather than a local preference.
South Korea—Provincial mandate (2014 onward)
In 2014, Gyeonggi Province mandated a 9:00 a.m. start for all elementary and secondary schools. Other provinces soon followed with 30–90 minute delays.
Because Korea’s education system is highly centralized, the policy was implemented within three months, although regional school steering committees retain the right to adjust specific operating hours based on community feedback and some academic high schools start slightly earlier.
Taiwan—Taipei’s citywide 8:10 a.m. minimum arrival
Beginning in the 2022–23 school year, Taipei’s Department of Education announced that morning self‑study periods would become optional, meaning no junior‑high or high‑school student could be required to arrive before 8:10 a.m.
The decision was made by the Taipei City Government, led at the time by Mayor Ko Wen‑je, as part of a broader effort to reduce student stress, curb excessive cram‑school hours, and address concerns about adolescent sleep deprivation.
As a citywide policy in a highly urbanized region, this is effectively a regional mandate.
Venezuela—the government changed the national clock
Of every approach I’ve ever heard, Venezuela’s in the most dramatic: back in 2007 Hugo Chávez was concerned that children were waking in darkness. So he solved the problem by literally altering the time on the clock, shifting Venezuela’s time zone back 30 minutes. Problem solved!
Unfortunately, in 2016 Nicolás Maduro, in an attempt to conserve evening energy, reversed the change with equal ease.
Why the U.S. Struggles With What Other Countries Can Do Quickly
Looking across these examples, a pattern emerges:
Centralized systems can make structural changes quickly.
Regional governments can coordinate across districts.
National ministries can set minimum standards.
The United States, in contrast, relies on piecemeal, district‑by‑district change, a model that almost guarantees slow progress, uneven implementation, and enormous political friction.
This isn’t because Americans are uniquely resistant to science. It’s because our governance structure makes coordinated action extraordinarily difficult.
And this isn’t unique to school start times.
Challenges to Nationwide Action in the USA
If you look at major social reforms in American history, you often see change emerging from a dynamic interplay among local, state, and national forces—sometimes reinforcing each other, sometimes blocking each other, and often moving in multiple directions simultaneously.
Women’s suffrage is a classic example. Long before the 19th Amendment, women gained limited voting rights in scattered local contexts such as school elections in parts of New England beginning in the 1830s. Women even briefly voted in statewide elections in New Jersey between 1776 and 1807. The first full suffrage victories came later at the territorial and state levels, beginning with Wyoming Territory in 1869 and Colorado in 1893. Meanwhile, national suffrage advocates were pushing federal amendments as early as 1878. For decades, these local, state, and national efforts overlapped, collided, and propelled one another, but only after sustained cross‑level pressure and intense political conflict did the country finally adopt the 19th Amendment in 1920.
School start times may be following a similar dynamic. Local districts have been making changes since the 1990s. A few states (California, Florida) have more recently adopted statewide minimums, and increasingly numbers are considering similar legislation. Meanwhile, national policy remains elusive—not for lack of trying, but because our system is designed to make national public‑health action (and many other types of social reforms) extraordinarily difficult, and often quite slow.
No one illustrates this better than Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who has been trying to create national change since 1998, when she first introduced the ZZZ’s to A’s Act. She has reintroduced versions of the bill repeatedly—across multiple Congresses, under different administrations, and with ever stronger scientific evidence behind her—and each time the bill has stalled.
But Centralization Cuts Both Ways: The Indonesia Example
It’s tempting to look at the global examples above and conclude that national authority is always the answer. But centralized power can move school schedules in the wrong direction just as quickly as in the right one.
This is clear from the Venezuela example above, where an autocratic government made it easy to change the nation’s clock to help students sleep but just as easy to reverse the decision. Similarly, in Indonesia, a regional governor attempted to mandate 5:00 a.m. school start times for high school students—not to improve sleep, but to “instill discipline.” The proposal sparked national outcry, with parents, teachers, and health experts warning that such a schedule would be harmful and unworkable. Critics noted that students would have to wake as early as 3:00 a.m. to comply.
The pushback worked, fortunately. Still, the episode is a reminder that while centralized authority can accelerate evidence‑based change, it can also accelerate evidence‑defying change. And without checks, consultation, or public‑health framing, national or regional mandates can be just as misguided as local inertia.
In other words: the problem isn’t centralization or decentralization. It’s whether the system prioritizes science, health, and the well-being of students.
What We Can Learn From the World
The global examples above show that:
It is possible to move entire populations of students into healthier schedules.
It is possible to treat adolescent sleep as a structural issue rather than a local preference.
And it is possible to make these changes quickly—when the school governance structure allows it.
But Indonesia’s 5 a.m. proposal shows the flip side: speed and scale are only helpful when the direction is right.
The U.S. may never adopt a national school start time policy. But as more states follow California and Florida, and as more districts build the political will to act, we may eventually reach the same tipping point that brought us women’s suffrage, child labor laws, and seat belt requirements. (And, I’ll add, even if we emerge victorious, we will still need to apply the same eternal vigilance to preserving these rights and protections.)
I certainly need to do deeper research into this and am by no means an expert on school policy worldwide. But as we continue to grapple with how to give students a fair shot at healthy sleep, it’s worth remembering that other countries have already shown us what’s possible and that our own history shows how slow, uneven change can eventually become universal.