SHANGHAI, Sep. 3 -- MORE than 1.6 million primary and secondary school students in the city were back in class for the start of the fall semester today.

Starting this semester, 370 brand new school buses painted in the same bright yellow color and bearing a unified purple "school bus" logo will begin to run on local streets as the new school bus management regulation went into effect.

School buses rented from professional auto companies are required to have the vehicle's and driver's information on file with the local education authority.

Rented vehicles should also bear the unified school bus logo in order to raise safety awareness, officials said.

To date, more than 1,370 rented school buses have been registered, and 750 drivers have undergone training programs, according to the Shanghai Education Commission.

Locals are also encouraged to report school buses that failed to bear the unified logos to the commission. The traffic police will also kick off a citywide spot check from September 15 to rule out violating school vehicles.

Violators will be banned from running on local streets, commission officials said.

The new semester will see primary and secondary school students start classes 30 minutes later in the morning, a measure that the commission initiated to ensure longer sleeping hours for children.

Primary school students are required to get to school at 8:15am, compared with the 7:30am or even earlier in previous semesters. The new check-in time for secondary school students is 8am.

``Later school time enables me to sleep more, and my mom doesn't need to go to office early to catch up with my schedule either,'' said Feng Yue, a 12-year-old boy whose mother takes him to school before going to work.