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January 29, 2026 — 7:30pm
Students at The King’s School will start normal lessons late on Wednesday this year under a timetable overhaul designed to strengthen students’ capacity for self-regulation and time management.
Every Wednesday at King’s will start with an “asynchronous” learning day, whereby students are told to do self-directed learning at home or school before normal classes begin at 9.40am – 50 minutes later than their normal 8.50am start.
Asynchronous learning gives students time to study and complete tasks independently rather than in a live class in front of a teacher at a certain time.
The delay to traditional lessons on Wednesday was introduced last year and comes after the school moved its 8.20am start back by 30 minutes – a move praised by sleep experts as beneficial to teenage brains and sleep patterns.
Acting headmaster Reverend Stephen Edwards said in a note to parents last week the new routine was welcomed by students, parents and teachers, citing the results of a survey conducted last year, which said only 26 per cent of students surveyed preferred the old routine.
“The benefits of a slower start to the day, more time to connect with peers at lunch, a greater focus of self-directed learning and greater opportunity to engage with co-curricular activities were noted,” Edwards said.
The timetable shift at King’s comes after a handful of other schools across the state have upended the traditional five-day school week in a bid to better cater for students’ learning needs.
A King’s spokesman said: “The routine is designed to strengthen students’ capacity for self-regulation and time management, while also allowing greater opportunity for connection, co-curricular engagement and community involvement — all of which are core to a King’s education.
“The catalyst for introducing the weekly routine was the school’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that the school week’s structure supports student learning, development and wellbeing in a contemporary schooling context.”
There will also be two “asynchronous” learning days this year when students will be expected to learn from home.
One King’s parent, speaking anonymously, expressed concern about the reduction in class time while fees had increased.
But the spokesman for the school said: “Asynchronous learning lessons are not a withdrawal of teaching time, nor a reduction in learning.”
Woolcock Institute of Medical Research paediatric and adolescent sleep physician Dr Chris Seton praised delaying the start time because it catered to the overwhelming tendency for teenagers to go to bed and wake up later, which was otherwise leaving them sleep-deprived.
“I am overjoyed to hear that,” he said.
While data showed teenagers performed academically better consistently with late school starting times, he said very few high schools in Australia had budged to cater for that.
“The physiology of teenagers does not fit the current school day. It’s like bringing a square peg into a round hole,” he said.
He noted numerous states in the US had legislated late school starting times. At the sleep deprivation clinic he runs, he often sees Sydney private school students because they had weekly schedules packed with extracurricular activities.
“There is a real distinct predominance of private schools. And within those private schools, the elite private schools have many more kids with sleep problems,” he said.
Altering the school day is often more difficult than it looks. A trial of extended hours of NSW public schools to modernise hours for working families, announced by the previous government, never resulted in any systemwide change.
At the beginning of 2024, Chevalier College in the Southern Highlands made headlines over its flexible Mondays program, with year 10 to 12 students who passed a course permitted to learn at home most weeks of the school year.
Two years on, principal Greg Miller said academic results and wellbeing scores had increased.
Students must get their parents’ permission to learn remotely. Almost 100 per cent of year 12 students learn from home, while that figure stands at around 70 per cent for year 10 and 11 students.
But the school will scrap “flipped Mondays” for years 7 to 9 this year.
That model gave students some time on Monday to consolidate recent concepts learnt and engage in “surface-level” tasks individually while at school before more in-depth learning later in the week.
“It was creating tension … for students to complete work and staff to set it within what was considered by some to be either unrealistic or too tight a time frame,” he said.
Miller linked the learning from home for older students with better wellbeing scores.
He said he could see the merits in a later start for students at King’s, or allowing them to do self-directed learning, but said change to the traditional schooling models was difficult.
“In education, because we’re used to an industrial model that works on bells and timing, any change to that is always met with strong discernment from any community,” he said.
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