Sleep rhythms change during adolescence. Students often find it harder to get to sleep at night and harder to get up in the morning. Their best time for learning is in the afternoon. So why not just adjust the school day? Margaret Ryan has an interesting article on the BBC website about an English secondary school that did just that, starting lessons one hour later at 10:00am. Their preliminary results seem favorable, but the research has not yet been published.
Prof Till Roenneberg, who is an expert on studying sleep, said it was “nonsense” to start the school day early.
He said: “It is about the way our biological clock settles into light and dark cycles. This clearly becomes later and later in adolescence.”
Prof Roenneberg said if teenagers are woken up too early they miss out on the most essential part of their sleep.
“Sleep is essential to consolidate what you learn,” he said.