Teachers face daily struggle with sleepy, hungry pupils

Teachers in almost two thirds of primary school classrooms are struggling to teach their students because the children have not had enough sleep.

Wed, 12 Jun, 2013 - 01:00

Stephen Rogers and Niall Murray

Pupils are also struggling to concentrate because they are not properly nourished.

In a report released by the Educational Research Centre, the fatigue is blamed on the fact that 54% of the 10-year-olds surveyed have a television in their bedroom and 19% have a computer.

The report, based around the findings of an international survey, found that 62% of teachers said their classes of 10-year-olds contained pupils who were not sufficiently rested. That is 13% above the international average of 48% reported across the 60 countries. In Japan, just 20% of teachers reported the problem.

“It may be the case that some parents are unaware that their children are not getting enough sleep,” said the authors. “For example, while most may consider about eight hours of sleep per night to be typical for adults, it is less well known that a 10-year-old typically needs about 10 hours.”

A lack of basic nutrition was reported by 22% of Irish teachers surveyed — 4% of them said poor nutrition among pupils limited their teaching “a lot”.

That compares badly with our international counterparts. In the North for example, no teachers said their teaching was limited “a lot” by pupils’ lack of nutrition, and only 20% were in classes where teaching was limited to some extent. In Finland, only 9% of classes were limited “to some extent”.

“Combined, lack of sleep and lack of basic nutrition can represent significant barriers for pupils’ engagement with school, and the evidence would suggest that the combination is most common among children from less affluent families.

“Indeed, within Ireland, problems with children not getting enough sleep and receiving poor or inadequate nutrition have been implicated as factors that ‘militate against school completion’, particularly in socio-economically disadvantaged areas,” said the authors.

A major concern is that parents are not being given enough information on how their children are doing. The report said Irish teachers were well below average in the frequency with which they met parents to discuss their child’s progress.

One of the authors, Eemer Eivers, said: “The type of information given to Irish parents is somewhat imbalanced. Compared to other countries, there is much less information on academic achievement and much more information on non-academic accomplishments. Ireland is unusual too, in the extent to which homework is used as a means of communication between home and school.”

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation argues that, in spite of that finding, the report also showed high levels of satisfaction with parental involvement in their children’s education.