School start times

‘School days should start later’ - BBC Future

1. My cognitive performance
● When are you at your best? Plot your cognitive performance in the graph
below.

P 10
E 9
R 8
F 7
O 6
R 5
M 4
A 3
N 2
C 1
E
6 8 1 1 2 4 6 8 1 1 2 4
a a 0 2 p p p p 0 2 a a
m m a p m m m m p p m m
m m m m
TIME

Idiomatic expressions

A person who likes to get up early is _____________________________________

A person who likes to stay up late is _____________________________________

Discuss

Which idiomatic expression fits you best? Explain

What is the best time of day to do the following?

- Teach
- Work alone

The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity.
 - Attend meetings
- Study
- Exercise

Do you think the best time for activities are the same for all age groups?
Consider the following groups:
kindergarten, primary, teens, young adults, middle age adults, seniors 65 +

Listening to the BBC 60 second idea to improve the world

Listen and answer the following :

1. What are the three professions of the guest speakers?

2. Sum up Russel Foster’s 60 second idea.

3. Does the journalist believe the teen listeners would agree with Russel Foster?

4. When we discuss performance, what problematic dichotomy exists between the

teenage learner and the older teacher?

5. Do the other two guests agree with Russel Foster’s idea? Explain

6. According to Craig what key feature of the American University system addresses the
issue?

7. Russel Foster suggested that we should chronotype the population, what did he
mean?

Discuss

1. How do you feel this issue is being addressed in your country?

2. Do you agree with a delayed start for teens and young adults?

3. How many hours of school should teens and young adults have per week/per day?

4. How many hours of homework should teens and young adults have per day?

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 5. How many work hours should adults have per week? Should those hours change as
we age?

6. Are there any interesting experiments or studies being done around this topic that
you’re aware of?

7. If you had the power to change the schedules of your school or work to suit
performance rhythms, would you change anything?

Transcript

Journalist: Introduces Prof Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at the University of
Oxford, German Photographer from Luxembourg American Historian Craig Klovosky

Dr. Foster: My 60 second idea to make the world a better place would be to start teen and twenty year
ond education in schools and colleges at around 10’oclock in the morning rather than at 8 o’clock in
the morning.

And the reason for this is that we’re now appreciating that teenagers aren’t lazy. They get up late and
go to bed late because their seems to be some underlining biological basis for it. And I think that we
should accommodate this biology within the school program. When we do do that we see that exam
success increaces, we see that truantism goes down, and we see that things like self harm go down.

So by allowing students to start their classes a bit later you enhance the education experience. Now
what’s ironic is that while the children are peaking in terms of performance in the late morning and
ealry afternoon. You get the opposite for the teachers. And so teachers would be dropping and so you
have this apauling dichotomy between the teacher experience and the student experience.

Journalist : Well I’m sure that any teenagers listening are giving this a big thumbs up to that, who
wants to get up early for school in the morning. But as you say, the teachers might worry, if it as you
get older you want to get up earlier and don’t last as long as the day goes on.

Dr. Foster: That’s the problem, and in fact when cognitive performance has been looked at mid
morning and mid afternoon, you see the students going up about 10% in terms of cognitive
performance and the teachers going down. And the great problem is if you ask teachers they say “ I
know when my students are best able to perform” in the morning because that’s when they feel good.
And the students are half-asleep

Journalist : this does seem to rather cut across the idea that you might have some people who are
early morning people and some who are night owls. That’s irrespective of age,

Dr. Foster: Yes, so there will be these changes in the genes associated with the body clock and
superimposed on that will be all the steroidal, all the hormonal changes going across puberty, which
seem to have the effect of delaying the clock.

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Journalist : So Craig, you teach at the university of Illinois, What do you think of the idea? And how
do we square this circle that all the children will be alert in the afternoon and all the teachers flailing as
they try to keep going

Craig – As a teacher, I’m a little concerned, I do think I get more alert in the afternoon and I
sometimes teach in the evening, but that’s my own clock. I think the challenge that we have when we
see studies like those that Russell is siting is that they deal with averages and we can’t really be sure
when we average alertness that it’s going up for young people at one time of the day and down for
another but there may be a pretty wide distribution across that average so I think flexibility, I agree
with Russel in that case, flexibility is key. And certainly in the American University system, if students
can choose when their classes start they seldom choose classes that start at 8 or 9 in the morning. So,
they’re confirming the conclusions that we have here and I think that when faculty teach they seldom
choose to teach classes that start at 3 or 4 in the afternoon unless they are a little bit later oriented
person like myself, so I think there’s a lot to what he’s saying but I think the average will not capture
everyone.

Journalist : What about you Rute, would you go for this.?

Rute - Yeah absolutely

Journalist : I was just thinking that maybe we need to tailor our activities altogether Russell, so you
have teenagers who go to school later in the day and perhaps you say that the only people who can
teach them are relatively young teachers, so then what do you do with the older teachers? Well maybe
they will have to milk cows and deliver post, all those early morning activities.

Dr. Foster: I think that you’re raising a really important idea in the sense that we should chronotype
the population. Morning and evening people and they should be allocated to perform at different times
of the day. I mean I’ve wondered this within the context of the city. If you think about it, the money
markets have to span the 24 hour day. So wouldn’t it be sensible if you put the people on the American
markets, the European markets and the Asian markets who were best able to cope because of their
body clocks.

Journalist : Thank you for the Idea Russel Foster

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