Angry outbursts, irritability, anxiety, feeling low and tearful, no motivation, distracted easily, poor memory, fidgeting, feeling unwell, challenging behaviour: these are all examples of how sleep deprivation can manifest in the classroom - and not just with students. 

Sleep is vital for our physical and mental health, yet very few of us can say that we, or our students sleep well.

As a sleep and wellbeing specialist, and after many years working with children and young people in a variety of settings, I recognise first-hand the negative impact that poor sleep is having on our children and young people’s on emotional wellbeing, behaviour and academic outcomes.  

The average number of hours of quality sleep per night required for a Year 1 student is 11 hours and for a Year 5 student it is 10 hours. By Year 10 it is around 9 hours and for us as adults, it is an average of 8 hours sleep per night.

Research: Why teachers need research that works in the real world

Classroom practice: What happened when I didn’t talk for an entire lesson

Must read: Does a student’s face tell you they’re learning?

How many of your students are sleeping well? And what about you, are you getting enough sleep?

A research study I conducted in 2019, Opening Our Eyes to the Power of Sleep, put the impact sleep has on education under the spotlight, specifically, the perceptions of sleep from Year 5 pupils.

Themes identified were a lack of understanding about sleep, including mixed messages and sleep myths, inconsistent guidance from parents and carers around bedtimes and helpful sleep practices and fears and anxieties about bedtime. Environmental factors inhibiting sleep were also highlighted, including the impact of the use of devices on sleep.

The children did have some level of understanding about the importance of sleep but this had not, in most cases, been internalised to change unhelpful sleep practices, primarily device usage. Below are some examples of what they told me. 

• “I was very tired. I did not want to go to school at all.”
• “I hate sleeping because you get bored! It is the worst part of the day.”
• “I think sleep is important because it shuts your brain down, that’s how you rest too so that you are ready in the morning to go to school.”
• “I was on my iPad. That’s all I do until I go to sleep, but it doesn’t help because it has a blue light in it and that doesn’t help you to go to sleep but then if I don’t watch it then I will get bored.”
• “I hate sleep because I have really bad dreams”

A further theme was the use of idioms to describe sleep, which can impact sleep practices and sleep identity - a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy about sleep habits.

Examples included: “I woke up on the wrong side of bed”, “I’m an early bird” and “I am a light sleeper”.

The children were inquisitive to find out more about sleep and motivated to learn about this subject, demonstrating a window of opportunity for educators on this subject.

As one child said: “How do we get so tired? I get tired…I feel like I’ve been asleep for about 15 minutes and then it’s seven o’clock in the morning.”

How to embed sleep education into the curriculum

So, what does this mean for teachers and school staff? What can they do, in the classrooms, to support children to get a great night’s sleep? The following three things need to happen.

• We need a holistic approach linking education, social care, health, and public health which addresses the gaps in understanding of the importance of sleep for our physical and mental health and our individual potential. 
• A change in public perceptions is also vital: this requires an integrated response or “societal effort” to increase knowledge and to change behaviour too.  
• And lastly, we need to increase the importance put on sleep, and involve parents and carers in modelling and educating on positive sleep practices in the same way we might promote healthy eating. 

On a practical level, sleep education could include:

• A cross curricular approach in primary schools, as early as the foundation stage to promote knowledge and understanding on the importance of sleep and healthy sleep practices.
• Activities such as relaxation and reminders of the importance of sleep for health and well-being in PE lessons.
• Average sleep requirements in maths lessons.
• Understanding sleep stages and the circadian rhythm in science lessons.
• PSHE lessons from KS1 to 4 on sleep.
• Continued promotion of healthy sleep practices for positive mental and physical health and resilience through staff training, parent carer workshops and class-based interventions.
• Recognised “Sleep and Wellbeing Champions” in each school to initiate and raise awareness on this topic with staff representation and pupil representation as a minimum.
• Sleep education packages for parents, carers and childcare professionals as the key “sleep messengers”, to raise awareness about the importance of sleep and healthy sleep practices for wellbeing and attainment.

Improving the nation’s sleep is vital for us each to reach our individual potential and for the classroom to be a calmer, happier and more productive learning environment for students and teachers.

We can start by raising awareness and educating children, young people, teachers, parents, carers and all childcare professionals on the importance of sleep and how we sleep well.

Sara Kendrick is a mental health practitioner at CAMHS and a sleep and wellbeing specialist. She can be contacted on Linkedin.

Further reading

Why we sleep, Matthew Walker

Teaching the World to Sleep, Dr David Lee

Tired but Wired, Nerina Ramlakhan

Sleep and your Special Needs Child, Victoria Dawson and Antonia Chitty

The Sleep Charity