In the Philippines, from Monday to Friday, school hours usually start from 7:30 am to 4pm or 5pm.  A student needs to wake up at 5 or 6 am in the morning to prepare, goes home at 4 and still they need to do school works that takes hours to finish. If you will assess the everyday life of a student, a great portion is obviously spent only in school and doing school works at home. Because of this factor, most of the students, especially students in high school face chronic health problems like sleep deprivation. According to a research, a person needs to get enough sleep; one needs an average of 8 hours a day for the body to function well; and because of the long school hours, this ‘need’ is being sacrificed by many students.

A tiring day, loads of school works and lack of sleep can affect a student’s academic performance. As a result, students tend to sleep inside our classrooms or worse they choose to skip classes just to get rid of their drowsiness and rest. Education system at present is not healthy for students anymore. There are countries around the world that have less school hours than the Philippines but still they can manage to produce successful students. It’s not about how long you study; it’s about what are the things that you learn. We should be learners and not just students.

             Student life is the happiest period in the life of a person. Most of the students of today especially teens who are in high school have lots of things to do and an obligation to pursue. If you will assess the daily routine of the students, most of them woke up early for school and return home late bringing a lot of school works and projects. It seems that most of their time spent on their studies, others sacrificed their family bonding time and personal responsibilities just to finish all the required tasks. As a result, they tend to do all homework, staying late up night having a little amount of sleep making them unmotivated for the next day. There are times that he or she can't accomplish all the paper works, assignments, performance tasks and other works given to them.

 That's why it is very necessary to change this type of education. Our group believes that school hours have a direct relationship between the poor academic performances of the students. Instead of getting learnings, they are getting health problems and diseases because of too much stress and many pressure given to them. The goal of this petition is to lessen the hours that students spend in school. An average of 8 hours a day usually starts from 7:00 to 4:00 or for some 5:00 is the standard time that students spend in school. That means more time at school less time to work and no time for others, plus tiring day and stressful week. Our group aims to create an online source that will raise awareness about the said problem. The school day should definitely be reduced. Reducing School hours from 7:00-5:00 making it 8:00-2:00 an average of 6 hours will help not just the students but also the teachers in preparing lessons and for the learners to make their part. Through this there's a lot of benefit that the students and teachers would have. This will be an effective way for the students in making their homework, doing other personal responsibility, family bonding time, get enough sleep, prepare for the next day and making it productive. Also, for the teachers to plan more interesting lessons for the next day, relax and to avoid hectic and stressful day. That means they will have a balanced time for school and time for their self. We are hoping that the Department of Education would take an action to solve this problem.

To make this more productive than the 8 hours. One of our recommendation is 3 subjects per day, it means 2 hours per subject. Why 3 subjects per day? Based on many research, it’s very confusing for students if what subject they will focus on. There are 8-9 different subjects per day and they don’t know what subject they need to focus on. With our petition, students can focus on 3 subjects per day. With this, it will produce very productive day because they can do their projects, homework on 3 specific subjects per day. They don’t need to think what they need to do here because of the 3 subject rule. `  

To help students like us in the Philippines, our group aims to create a petition through Change.org, social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter to reach more people and achieve our main goal which is to reduce and make students life get better than the usual. We will be creating an info-graphic about the effects of having long school hours to a high school student. The scope of this project is to be able to promote awareness and reach the Department of Education, school’s administration, teachers, parents, and the students to sign out the petition. We need 25, 000 signs to make this happen.

We will be working on this, developing and finalizing the project, for a week. After that, we will begin the project through the different internet platforms. If expenses will occur, our team will be shouldering all the cost.

We, the senior high school students of Assumpta Technical High School at Sta. Monica, San Simon Pampanga, are open for questions and suggestions about our project. Feel free to contact us at cedrickjoeybungay@gmail.com and 09954392843. or for more Information Visit our Fb Page: Shorter School Hoursph and for our twitter account: @HoursPH