Woman lying in bed reaching for mug on carpet

Want to improve your children’s exam grades? Let them lie in bed for an extra hour. It may sound implausible, but the first scientific trial of the effects of allowing British teenagers to start school 60 minutes late has produced some startling results.

At Monkseaton high school on Tyneside, where 800 13-to 19-year-olds have been arriving for lessons at 10am since October, GCSE grades and punctuality have improved while absenteeism has plummeted. Previously the school opened, like most British schools, at 9am sharp.

Revealing the initial results of the ongoing experiment, which is being supervised by three academics, the head teacher, Paul Kelley, said: “The data is only preliminary but it shows that general absence has dropped 8% and persistent absenteeism by 27% because of the changes to the start to the school day. In addition, our GCSE results in maths and English in January this year were significantly improved on the scores in January 2009.

“We are setting the time of the school to the biological time of the kids. We have moved from a situation where it is absolutely intolerable for some kids to get up very early in the morning to one where they can manage to wake up and be alert for lessons at 10.”

Pupils at Monkseaton are enthusiastic about the change. Liam McClelland, 14, said: “I’m getting an extra hour’s sleep and I just feel much more awake. I used to be so careless in the morning: really simple things like when I was pouring milk or something, I’d miss the bowl. Now I feel happier in lessons, when before I was so tired I used to rest my head on my hands. I don’t get so many headaches either.” … Continue reading