Society: Children staying up too late

More than half Britain's schoolchildren oversleep on weekday mornings because they are staying up too late the night before, according to a study.

Up to one in four parents said that their offspring were not bothered about reaching the school gates on time and always overslept. Most blamed increasingly late bed-times are to blame.

Scots get up the latest and East Anglians the earliest the survey of 300 parents found. Welsh children are most likely to skip breakfast and one in 10 eat crisps and chocolate first thing compared with 3 per cent in England and Scotland.

The research, commissioned by the fruit juice drink Start-Up, also discovered that one third of children eat breakfast in front of the television and 14 per cent of parents are worried that their youngsters only survive on snack food during the day.