Overview
- Under a flexible schedule at Gossau Upper Secondary School, students could arrive at 7:30 a.m. or wait for the official 8:30 a.m. start.
- About 95% chose the later option, arriving an average of 38 minutes later and sleeping roughly 45 minutes longer on school days.
- Bedtimes stayed similar, while reports of difficulty falling asleep declined and health-related quality of life rose.
- Objective performance in English and mathematics improved compared with cantonal test results.
- The longitudinal observational study surveyed 754 pupils (mean age 14) before the change from a 7:20 a.m. start and again a year later, and it is published in the Journal of Adolescent Health (Albrecht et al., 2026).