Letter [2021] No. 11 of the Education Foundation Office

To the education departments (education commissions) of all provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government, and the Education Bureau of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps:

　　In order to ensure that primary and secondary school students enjoy sufficient sleep time and promote the healthy physical and mental development of students, the following notice is hereby given to further strengthen the sleep management of primary and secondary school students.

　　1. Strengthen scientific sleep publicity and education. Sleep is an important part of the body's recovery, integration and consolidation of memory, which is essential for promoting brain development, bone growth, vision protection, physical and mental health, and improving learning ability and efficiency of primary and secondary school students. All localities and schools should incorporate scientific sleep publicity and education into the curriculum teaching system, teacher training content, and home-school collaborative education mechanisms, and vigorously popularize scientific sleep knowledge through various channels such as physical education and health courses, mental health education, class team activities, popular science lectures, and parent schools and parents' associations, widely publicize the extreme importance of adequate sleep for the healthy growth of primary and secondary school students, improve teachers' ideological understanding, educate students to develop good sleep hygiene habits, and guide parents to pay attention to doing a good job in children's sleep management.

　　2. Clarify the requirements for students' sleep time. According to the physical and mental development characteristics of students of different ages, primary school students should sleep 10 hours a day, junior high school students should reach 9 hours, and high school students should reach 8 hours. Schools, families and other stakeholders should work together to ensure that primary and secondary school students get enough sleep.

　　3. Coordinate the arrangement of school work and rest time. Provincial-level administrative departments for education should proceed from ensuring that students need adequate sleep, and reasonably determine the work and rest time of primary and secondary schools in light of the actual situation. Elementary schools generally start classes no earlier than 8:20 a.m., and middle schools generally do not start earlier than 8:00 a.m.; schools must not require students to arrive at school in advance to participate in unified education and teaching activities, and for individual students who arrive at school early due to special family circumstances, schools should open their doors in advance and make proper arrangements; Reasonable arrangements should be made for recess and afternoon classes, and places and schools with the capacity should ensure that students have the necessary lunch breaks; Boarding schools should arrange their work and rest time reasonably to ensure that students meet the prescribed sleep time requirements.

　　Fourth, prevent excessive schoolwork from crowding out sleep time. Primary and secondary schools should increase the effectiveness of classroom teaching, strengthen the overall management of homework, strictly follow the requirements of relevant provisions, reasonably regulate and control the total amount of students' written homework, guide students to make full use of self-study classes or after-school service time, so that primary school students basically complete written homework in school, and middle school students complete most of their written homework in school, so as to avoid students taking too long to do homework after returning home, crowding out normal sleep time. The end time of training at off-campus training institutions must not be later than 20:30, and homework must not be assigned in any form such as pre-class preview, after-class consolidation, homework practice, WeChat group check-in, etc.

　　5. Arrange students' bedtime reasonably. Primary and secondary schools should guide parents and students to formulate a schedule for students' work and rest, and on the premise of ensuring students' sleep time requirements, and in consideration of students' individual sleep conditions, lunch breaks, and other realities, reasonably determine students' bedtime at night, and promote students' self-management, regular work and rest, and bedtime on time. Elementary school students generally go to bed no later than 21:20, junior high school students generally no later than 22:00, and high school students generally no later than 23:00. If individual students have not completed their homework by bedtime, parents should urge them to go to bed on time and not stay up late to ensure adequate sleep; Teachers should help students analyze the causes, strengthen academic guidance, propose improvement strategies, and adjust the content and amount of homework if necessary. Each region's departments of education, in conjunction with relevant departments, should truly strengthen the regulation and management of online training platforms and online games that are registered or filed in their jurisdiction, employing technical means to conduct regulation, ensuring that online live-streaming training activities must end no later than 21:00, and must not provide gaming services to minors between 22:00 and 8:00 the next day.

　　6. Guide students to improve their sleep quality. Teachers should pay attention to the mental state of students in class, and remind students and communicate with parents in a timely manner if they lack sleep. Instruct students to make good use of the time after returning home, adhere to the combination of work and rest, and exercise moderately. Instruct parents to create a warm and comfortable living and sleeping environment to ensure that students are relaxed physically and mentally and go to bed quietly on time.

　　7. Strengthen the supervision of students' sleep monitoring. Local administrative departments for education should attach great importance to doing a good job in the management and guidance of primary and secondary school students' sleep, include students' sleep status in the monitoring and monitoring system of students' physical health and education quality evaluation, and make full use of modern information technology means to improve the scientificity, pertinence, and effectiveness of students' sleep management. All local education supervision departments should include student sleep management work in the scope of routine supervision and the government's supervision and evaluation of the performance of educational duties. All localities should set up telephone or online platforms for supervision and reporting, unblock channels for parents to report problems and opinions, promptly improve relevant work, ensure that requirements are in place, truly ensure that students sleep well, and promote students' physical and mental health.

                                              General Office of the Ministry of Education

                                                           2021March 30, 200