Sleep scientists´ wake-up call for a later school day:
As they prepare a major study to test the idea, UK scientists have said that starting school at 10:00 could have huge benefits for teenagers. Research suggests that society pays too little attention to our body clock - and teenagers in particular have a late-running biological rhytm. This means an early start can cause sleep deprivation, which can then affect learning and health. A sleep expert made the argument at the British Science Festival in Bradford. Dr Paul Kelley said that teens lose up to two hours of sleep per day, which is "a huge society issue". He and colleagues from Oxford are leading a project called Teensleep, which is currently recruiting 100 schools from around the UK to take part in a test. Our body clock is a daily cycle which drives the regular rise and fall of certain genes as well as the ebb and flow of our cognitive performance, our metabolism and so on. For much of our lives - and especially in our teen years - there is a mismatch between this rhytm and the typical working day. In fact, Dr Kelley said, the body clock of most people between age 10 and 55 is not well-suited to rising early. "Most people wake up to alarms because they dont naturally wake up at the time when they have to get up and go to work. So we´ve got a sleep-deprived society - it´s just that this age group of 14- to 24-year-olds is more deprived than any other group." Dr Kelley and his colleagues, including well-known Oxford sleep researcher Prof Russell Foster, argue that school days should start at 10:00 and university at 11:00, to better match the rhytms of teenagers and young adults. "All the evidence points to the same thing," Dr Kelley told BBC News. "There are no negative outcomes for moving the school day later."
Warum sollte das nicht gehen?