Kids & Education
Sleep School A new academy in London will let its students start later. Amanda Constance reports on the teen sleep debate
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eenagers are lazy, right? Wrong. According to a growing body of research they just have a different body clock from the rest of us and if schools would wake up to this evidence and let teens start their day later, scientists believe they would see great gains in both the health of their students and academic results. Some schools are taking note. When the UCL Academy in Swiss Cottage, northwest London, starts the new term this September, it will have been a year since it became the first London school to allow teens to ‘sleep in’. When the academy, which is sponsored by University College London, opened in September 2012, its students were allowed to start at 10am and leave at 5.30pm. Headmistress Geraldine Davies argues that the school is already seeing positive results. ‘Youngsters are turning up alert and ready to learn and are focused and engaged in lessons,’ she says. ‘We have no hard data on exam results yet… but the aim is to rigorously review the effects. Pupil and teacher surveys have so far been positive.’ Scientists say there is now biological evidence underpinning the argument that schools should start later. It was in the US in the 1990s that researchers first identified an ‘adolescent time shift’ in the sleep pattern of teenagers and in the
past two decades a number of US schools have adopted later start times. In the UK, Professor Russell Foster, a professor of circadian neuroscience at Oxford has been at the forefront of work on teenage sleep patterns and their effect on performance at school. He explains: ‘The biology of human sleep timing changes as we age. As puberty begins, bedtimes and waking times get later. This trend continues until 19.5 years in women and 21 in men. Then it reverses. At 55 we wake at about the time we woke prior to puberty. On average this is two hours earlier than adolescents. This means that for a teenager, a 7am alarm call is the equivalent of a 5am start for a person in their 50s.’ Prof. Foster observed a UK school in Liverpool where many students were getting just 5 hours sleep a night; unsurprisingly, teachers reported students falling asleep in class. He says a lack of sleep increases stress and is associated with a loss of humour, lack of empathy and low mood. Indeed, research has shown that blood-glucose regulation was greatly impaired in young men who slept only 4 hours on six consecutive nights, with their insulin levels comparable to the early stages of diabetes. But it isn’t just a biological problem. Society isn’t very conducive to a good night’s sleep with more relaxed parental attitudes to bedtimes by parents and
access to TVs, PCs, gaming devices and mobile phones all promoting alertness that doesn’t aid healthy sleep. Prof Foster has become so persuaded of the need for schools to adjust their start times that, in 2009, he instigated a 10am start for 800 students at Monkseaton High School in North Tyneside, the first British school to do so. After observing the students, Foster says that the outcomes were clear: ‘The Monkseaton experiment shows, frankly, that if you start at 10am, grades go up.’ Dr Paul Kelley, who was then headmaster of Monkseaton, went on to advise the new UCL Academy in northwest London. There are doubters, however. One issue is a perceived negative impact on after-school activities, particularly competitive sports, although schools in the US have reported that this hasn’t been a problem. But a greater issue here and in Australia is union objections to longer working hours for teachers and support staff. Later this year, Dr Kelley will publish research he has conducted with Professor Foster on adolescent sleep and he remains convinced that there is an ‘overwhelming case’ for shifting the times of a school day so that their starting times match teenagers’ biology. It will reduce their sleep deprivation, their learning will improve and, crucially, it will help to protect their physical and mental health,’ Kelley says. 29
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