BEIJING, Oct. 11-- Students of Xianlie Road Central Primary School in Guangzhou will start school at 8 a.m. each morning after the National Day holidays, only one month after the Guangzhou Education Bureau asked all primary schools and kindergartens to start school at 8:30 a.m.

The education authorities adopted the new time schedule to guarantee enough time for school children to sleep, and the move was welcomed by parents.

A Ms Liang said she often hated waking her child up around 7 a.m. before the new schedule was implemented and her child felt much better sleeping till 7:30 a.m. after the change."Though the new school time do not fit in my own schedule, I think it more important that my kid gets the sleep he needs," she said.

However, the half an hour of extra sleep was cancelled after only one month. Liang complained that her child, a fourth-grader at the Xianlie Road school, brought back home a notice Sept. 30 asking students to follow the old schedule after the holidays without explaining why.

Students at the school are now required to start the morning with recitation at 8 a.m., then do some exercise and eat breakfast. There was no recitation at the beginning of the semester and the morning's exercise was set for 8:30 a.m.

A school official said his school was not an exception as many other primary schools had returned to the old schedule. He insisted there would be not enough time for courses when school began at 8:30 a.m. Because the morning courses had to be completed by noon, teachers had to reduce each session from 40 minutes to 35 minutes to fit the new schedule.

An education bureau official said schools could not start classes earlier than 8:30 a.m., but the regulations do not forbid other arrangements, such as morning exercise, before that time. The purpose of the new regulations is to ensure adequate sleep for children, parents said, whether the extra half an hour is used for morning exercise or classes.

(Source: Shenzhen Daily/Agencies)