Why you should start work at 10am; Kids at 11am

[summer]

The Guardian

School start times should be put back to as late as 11am to combat a sleep-deprivation crisis among young people, a scientist has suggested.



Paul Kelley, of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, said young people in Britain were losing on average 10 hours’ sleep a week, making them more sleep-deprived than a junior doctor on a 24-hour shift.



Speaking at the British Science Festival in Bradford on Tuesday, Prof Kelley called for an end to early starts at schools, colleges and university to “improve the lives of a generation”.



He said children aged eight to 10 should start school at 8.30am or later, 16-year-olds should start at 10am and 18-year-olds at 11am.



Kelley has been working with fellow Oxford neuroscientist Russell Foster and Steven Lockley of Harvard Medical School to push for a sea-change in the approach to sleep for children.



They have been working with the Education Endowment Foundation and the Wellcome Trust on the Teensleep project, which Kelley said was the largest study of its kind and which is aims to recruit 100 schools to trial different start times.



The recommendations arise from a deeper understanding of circadian rhythms – our internal body clock, which determines optimum levels of concentration, wakefulness and work ability.



“At the age of 10 you get up and go to school and it fits in with our nine-to-five lifestyle,” Kelley said. “When you are about 55 you also settle into the same pattern. But in between it changes a huge amount and, depending on your age, you really need to be starting around three hours later, which is entirely natural.”



Ignoring our natural circadian rhythms could lead to exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, weight gain and hyper-tension, he said, and could make a person more prone to stimulant or alcohol use and risk-taking.



“This is a huge issue for society,” Kelley said. “We are generally a sleep-deprived society but the 14-24 age group is more sleep-deprived than any other sector of society. This causes serious threats to health, mood performance and mental health.”




If schools across the UK adopted the new start times, he said, GCSE attainment would rise by about 10%.



The problem goes beyond merely feeling tired, Kelley said. If a child gets less than six hours sleep a night, over the course of a week this can lead to more than 700 changes in the way their genes behave.



Similar changes are not seen in children who get eight-and-a-half hours sleep a night. He said illnesses as serious as schizophrenia often developed at an age associated with the beginnings of sleep deprivation problems.



Kelley said every governing body of every school in the UK had the power to alter start times if they wish. He conceded that later school starts might be problematic for working parents, but added: “The interesting thing is that parents usually support this. All the studies show that later start times improve family life, travel times are shorter, it’s safer for children to travel to school.”



Guy Meadows, a sleep physiologist at the Sleep School in London, agreed there was a problem that needed tackling. He said: “British children are among the most sleep-deprived in the world. There was a recent study which looked at 900,000 children globally. The US was top and Britain came sixth. Sleep is vitally important for children, and it’s when they develop mentally, physically and emotionally.”



He said families had a key role to play in ensuring children get enough sleep. In school sessions aimed at teaching children how to improve their sleep, Meadows said, 96% of participants said they used a phone or mobile device in the last 30 minutes before sleep.



“We’re finding that children have phones or tablet from the age of about 10 or 11. These devices emit light which mimics the light from the sun and they essentially trick our brains into thinking we should be active, not winding down for sleep, and that interferes with our circadian rhythms,” he said.


The Guardian

Lots of us know we are sleep-deprived, but imagine if we could fix it with a fairly simple solution: getting up later. In a speech this week at the British science festival, Dr Paul Kelley, clinical research associate at the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University, called for schools to stagger their starting times to work with the natural biological rhythms of their students. It would improve cognitive performance, exam results and students’ health (sleep deprivation has been linked with diabetes, depression, obesity and an impaired immune system).



It follows a paper, published last year, in which he noted that when children are around 10 their biological wake-up time is about 6.30am; at 16 this rises to 8am; and at 18, someone you may think of as a lazy teenager actually has a natural waking hour of 9am. The conventional school starting time works for 10-year-olds, but not 16- and 18-year-olds. For the older teenagers, it might be more sensible to start the school day at 11am or even later. “A 7am alarm call for older adolescents,” Kelley and his colleagues pointed out in the paper, “is the equivalent of a 4.30am start for a teacher in their 50s.”



He says it’s not as simple as persuading teenagers to go to bed earlier. “The body’s natural rhythm is controlled by a particular kind of light,” says Kelley. “The eye doesn’t just contain rods and cones: it contains cells that then report to the SCN [suprachiasmatic nuclei], in the hypothalamus.” This part of the brain controls our circadian rhythms over a 24-hour cycle. “It’s the light that controls it. It’s like saying: ‘Why can’t you control your heartbeat?’”



But it isn’t just students who would benefit from a later start. Kelley says the working day should be more forgiving of our natural rhythms. Describing the average sleep loss per night for different age groups, he says: “Between 14 and 24 it’s more than two hours. For [people aged between] 24 to about 30 or 35, it’s about an hour and a half. That can continue up until you’re about 55 when it’s in balance again. The 10-year-old and 55-year-old wake and sleep naturally at the same time.”



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This might be why, he adds, the traditional nine to five is so ingrained; it is maintained by bosses, many of them in their mid-50s and upwards, because “it is best for them”. So should workplaces have staggered starting times, too? Should those in their 50s and above come in at 8am, while those in their 30s start at 10am, and the teenage intern or apprentice be encouraged to turn up at 11am? Kelley says that synchronised hours could have “many positive consequences. The positive side of this is people’s performance, mood and health will improve. It’s very uplifting in a way, because it’s a solution that will make people less ill, and happier and better at what they do.”



There would probably be fewer accidents as drivers would be more alert, he says. It could spell the end of rush hour as people staggered their work and school-run times. A later start to the day for many, says Kelley, “is something that would benefit all people, particularly families; parents who go and try to wake up teenagers who are waking up three hours too early. It creates tensions for everybody.”



So what time does Kelley start work? “I am 67 so that means I’m back to [being] 10 years old, and I get up just after six. I wake naturally.” And yes, he says he finds the start of his working day much easier now than he did when he was younger.

[2curlydogs]

Does this genius have any idea on when school should end, then, with these late start times?

Just wondering. Didn't see it in the article.

[summer]

Sept 9, 2015 14:29:24 GMT -5 2curlydogs said:

Does this genius have any idea on when school should end, then, with these late start times?

Just wondering. Didn't see it in the article.

Dude, Germans start school at 7:45 and are home by 11:30am.  I'm not saying it's right or that I agree, just sayin that is what happens.  

[redheadbaker]

If I started work at 10, factoring in my commute, I'd get home at 7, right when DS goes to bed.

No thanks.

[Deleted]

I wish this would happen. I've noticed that I don't get naturally tired enough to sleep (without wine, lol) until around 11-11:30 which sucks when I have to wake up by 7. But if I get to sleep in til 9, I feel so refreshed. I was just thinking about this over the weekend.

[meshaliuknits]

Sept 9, 2015 14:41:05 GMT -5 pt716 said:

Yeah I would not be ok with pushing back the work day to 10 AM. That would eliminate my most productive hours, and would mean I would only have 2 hours between getting home from work and going to bed. That could potentially be ok if I could then run errands and stuff before work, but most places don't open early enough for that.

Same. I get all my good work in by noon. After lunch it's all downhill. By 3pm I'm just this side of useless. I've been like this at least since college.

[taratru]

I've been saying this for years about kids. When I finally have enough and open my own school, it will go from 11-5.

[bears]

The schools here stagger start times so all the schools can share buses. High school kids are picked up first, which seems like lunacy to me.

[rootbeerfloat]

Sept 9, 2015 14:46:40 GMT -5 meshaliuknits said:

Sept 9, 2015 14:41:05 GMT -5 pt716 said:

Yeah I would not be ok with pushing back the work day to 10 AM. That would eliminate my most productive hours, and would mean I would only have 2 hours between getting home from work and going to bed. That could potentially be ok if I could then run errands and stuff before work, but most places don't open early enough for that.

Same. I get all my good work in by noon. After lunch it's all downhill. By 3pm I'm just this side of useless. I've been like this at least since college.

Yeah, I'm a morning person. So is DS. You should see us grouches trying to do his homework without killing each other at 5pm. LOLforever at some teacher trying to teach him anything that time of day.

A later schedule would work for DD, though.

[cap]

I am a morning person, through and through (I mean, I have no problems being in the pool at the Y by 5:30 am to swim laps). It'd kill me to have to work until 6:30 or 7 every night.

[pescalita]

This is exactly why that chart was useful information. Something's gotta give.

[msmerymac]

I essentially do this, since I work west coast hours. It has its benefits and drawbacks. I still wake up by 7.

[jeaniebueller]

That is way too much downtime in the morning. I would much rather have that time in the evening.

[RoxMonster]

This is an interesting topic for me because my job is teaching high school. So I look at it from my perspective of when I'm most productive (morning), but also from the perspective of knowing later start times benefit HS kids.

My school doesn't start until 8:20 which isn't horrible (other districts nearby start as early as 7:30). I think a good compromise could be starting around 9 and finishing around 4 instead of 3.

[laurack]

the real solution is to make the work day only as long as the school day, yet my pay should remain the same.

[meshaliuknits]

Sept 9, 2015 15:11:32 GMT -5 laurack said:

the real solution is to make the work day only as long as the school day, yet my pay should remain the same.

*adds to the meshaliu presidential platform*

[penguingrrl]

That sounds glorious to me! My kids struggle like a mofo with their 8 am start and I shudder to think what the 7:35 HS start time will do to them. Even at 8 and 6 their natural wake time isn't early. On weekends and days off/summer they're rarely awake before 8. 9-9:30 would be an absolutely ideal start time for them.

[curbsideprophet]

Sept 9, 2015 15:11:32 GMT -5 laurack said:

the real solution is to make the work day only as long as the school day, yet my pay should remain the same.

I am on board with this idea

[sfy]

I feel like some people pulled a TL:DR. It says that children aged 8-10 should start school at 8:30AM or later, 16-year-olds should start at 10AM and 18-year-olds at 11AM. I guess 11-15 are starting 9:00-9:30AM. Either way, no one under 16 would start later than 9:30, which isn't that different from things in my district. If 16-18-year-olds start late and get out late, that's not quite the same as an 8-year-old being dismissed at 5:00PM.

I wake up early almost everyday now, old people style. I still like to lie around, though.

[shell403b]

Our county just changed HS start times (pushed back about an hour) and it pushed the MS earlier--some of those kids get picked up by buses at 630am. 630! On the bus!

That's lunacy to me.

[earlgreyhot]

The guy is probably correct in moving the traditional work cycle later in the day would be beneficial to kids. And many adult-workers as well.

But, is his findings too little too late? Or will this be another perk of the privileged elite in their ability to afford the special schools that will support such a thing? And have a SAHP, or at least a parent with a super-flexible schedule.

In reading the thread preschool privilege and the working parent, I was struck in how it's really a backwards way to look at it. What is best for our kids? Like, really best? What is the ideal? Where's the evidence? Where's the actual studies??

We as families make the decision not really based on what is best for the kids, but rather what best fits our unique situations (can't afford a SAHP, can't afford daycare, etc). But if there was some agreement on what might actually be ideal*, then we can work to figure out how to set up our workplaces to that are productive in the global market, but yet provide families (which are the mico-incubators of our future workforce if you want to get all dystopian) the flexibility the need.

But that's all clearly crazy talk because Jesus. Bootstraps. Capitalism. Etc.

*based in actual science, and looking at all of history not just the whitewashed 50s

[tiramisu]

I would love for more schedules to accommodate night owls without shaming us as slackers or judging us as lazy. I do think this is an interesting idea, but have a hard time imagining it being implemented. The "get up and work early to be productive" mindset is so entrenched. It would be nice to have time to get ready and eat breakfast in the AM and not feel super rushed and frantic because doing anything at 7am or 8am is hard for me.

[StrawberryBlondie]

I'm usually only really productive at work between about 10 & 3-4. If I could somehow convince the uppers that that's still a full time gig if I get my shit done, my life will be made.

[racegrrl714]

I used to rue how much my old 11a-8p job that I had in my twenties screwed up my social life, but honestly it was a much better time frame for my natural rhythms and sleep patterns. I work 7-4 now and it's about to kill me. LOL