A Hove secondary school is proposing starting its day an hour later to better chime with teenagers’ body clocks.
Recent research has suggested that teenagers’ circadian rhythms are about two hours later than adults, which can have the knock on effect that sticking to adult hours during the day can lead to a lack of sleep – and poorer performance in school.
Blatchington Mill School has this week asked pupils, parents and staff whether they would support moving the day from 8.30am to 3pm to 9.25am to 4pm.
Head Ashley Harrold said: “With everything we do in school we want to take an approach of looking at research and how to do things better for young people and families and the implement this in school.
“We don’t think that school is the way it is and that it can never be changed. There may well be big logistical changes we could make.
“Actually our experience is that they’re generally quite focused in the morning and there’s not a massive issue with morning lessons. But we are looking for marginal gains to get a more harmonious learning experience.
“It may be that they’re absolutely fine now but they might be even better is we start a little bit later.
“And in terms of attendance – recognising that there if we have got a barrier that’s making it harder for pupils to get to school on time, we could help that.”
The consultation, which runs for the next two months, is asking for opinions on how this could affect student concentration, work ethic, attendance, punctuality, and ultimately educational outcomes.
A decision will be made following that after the Easter break. If implemented, the earliest it could be put into place is September next year.
