Does Sleep Affect Performance In School?

by Mario Bondy

November 3, 2021

Charlie Heald asleep in class above. How much sleep do GHHS Students get? (Photo: Mario Bondy).

According to the US Centers for Disease Control, students need 8-10 hours of sleep per night, but how many people actually get that? And how does that affect them? In a survey sent out to all of GHHS, these questions, and more were answered. The overall goal was to figure out how sleep affects school, and what causes the amount of sleep students get. In this, the survey was largely a success. And in addition, everyone who responded took the survey seriously. So, thank you if you happen to be reading this, you did good.

In total, there were 70 responses, including myself. The first question asked, name, which surprisingly about half of the field responded to was just a formality. The real first question asked was about the average hours of sleep each student gets per night. The top three answers were 7 hours, with 38% of the vote, meaning 26 votes. After that, it was 8 hours, with 27.5% of the vote, meaning 19 votes. And then 6 hours, with 11.5% of the vote, meaning 8 votes. Some interesting additions were the fact that 3 people selected less than four hours. And, not a single person selected 10 or more hours per night. We can assume that since school starts at 8, that means that on average, most students go to bed after 10 o’clock at night.

A variety of factors probably went into this. A total of 50 people answered that they did play a sport, which was 72.5% of all responses. Depending on the day, some students responded in a written answer that they didn’t get back from sports early enough to get decent sleep that night. And this in turn caused lower performances in school the following day. And as the day went on, the lack of sleep would slowly take its toll on people, and when asked about whether the lack of sleep eventually affected their ability in sports, the answer was a resounding yes.

So it appears that the cycle of sleep continues for most students until the weekend. Where even then, some students have tournaments, or early games and practices on the weekends. So unless people are taking naps constantly, the amount of sleep is still lacking. And we haven’t even talked about homework yet. An overwhelming 55 people, or 80%, said that homework had an impact on how much sleep they got. In comparison to the 11 people, 16%, who said that it didn’t matter to them, and the 3 people, 4%, who said it had no impact whatsoever, that’s almost 4 times as many people who are impacted versus not.

So the questions these results bring are quite clear. How does this compare to expert opinions? As mentioned earlier, experts, aka the CDC say that students should get 8-10 hours of sleep every night. And according to our own data, around 31.5% of Grandview students achieve that. Which honestly is better than I expected, and probably better than anyone else expected as well. In no way is this data 100% accurate. Probably only a quarter of the total student body responded, if that. But it doesn’t take away from the results we did receive.

So in summary, sadly, it seems like the experts are right. According to a combination of our data, as well as expert opinions, students do indeed need somewhere between 8-10 hours of sleep per night. Judging by the responses, everyone who didn’t get that amount was affected significantly more than anyone who did. So no more staying up until 2 AM anymore for all of you out there, you know who you are. Get to bed on time, at least as long as you want to do well in school, and sports. Unfortunately there were a few questions that I forgot to ask, such as “on average, what time do you get to sleep?” and as I wrote this I realized that they would be helpful. But by that point it was too late. But I think it turned out pretty well in the end. Again, thank you to anyone who responded, it was much appreciated, and also for taking it as seriously as you did.

As always, thank you for reading!