High School Students' Suggestions Led to Institutional Improvements at JOIN in Taiwan

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In 2016, high school students appealed on JOIN, a public policy online participation platform, to delay the start of the school day in order to reduce sleep deprivation, garnering over 6,500 responses and eliciting formal consideration from the Department of Education.

Then in 2020, junior high school students proposed that classes in the national, high school, and middle school start at 9:30, and a public consultation was held with over 10,000 endorsements.

Based on these proposals, the Ministry of Education has revised the system to ensure that students get a good night's sleep by limiting early self-study to one day per week, not treating students as tardy if they arrive at school before 8:10, and prohibiting morning tests, effective August 2022.

A "typical day" before the change

◇ Under the former guidelines, which went into effect in December 2016, the design was to allow students to operate independently only two or more days per week, and the rest of the time, "early self-study (morning extracurricular)" and "morning meetings" could be organized at the school's discretion.

Many high schools expanded this operation to "arrive at school by 7:30 a.m. daily, with quizzes and nominated presentations before first period at 8:10 a.m." and tardiness was treated as an absence or warning.

In principle, classes were held for seven periods (7 x 50 minutes), and students were usually dismissed around 5:00 p.m. at schools that included an eighth period of supplementary classes and club activities.

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