Changing Perspectives

When you are a child you either get up early by nature or are made to get up early by your parents for school. By the time you get to your teenage years you still have to get up early because of school but your body is telling you it isn’t ready because you stayed up so late. This isn’t to do with laziness or bad time keeping, but due to the changing nature of your brain which induces a kind of jet lag that puts you into a different time zone.

Now, when I was a teenager I was seen as being firmly in the lazy camp when I got up at 11 or 12 o clock on the weekend or during holidays. In that, my parents were following their parents because little was known about the brain and society worked on a ‘9 to 5’ setting for most people. When my children reached their teens I tended to be a little more tolerant of late weekends when there was nothing specific to get up for. This was partly as a result of my own teenage experiences and partly because, as a teacher, I had learned about the issues for the teenage brain.

Now, here’s a proposal for you to think about. If I were in charge of education, and I am glad I am not given the problems involved (!), I would start Secondary school not only at a different time but at a different age.

When I lived in Worcestershire we had a tripartite system of First, Middle and Senior schools running from 5 to 9, 9 to 13 and 13 to 18 respectively. That was the best system in many ways. Pupils in Middle Schools were able to develop at their own pace educationally and, more importantly, socially. The difference in readiness for Senior school between an 11 year old and a 13 year old is night and day. To nearly every 11 year old, Secondary school is scary or downright terrifying. By the time they get to 13, they are more confident in who they are. Why do you think places like Eton and Harrow start at 13? If it is good enough for the toffs it should be extended to those they would deride as plebs!

Once that school starts, it should be set up very differently in terms of teaching hours. I would start school at 10am and finish at 5pm which would partly sort out the issue of morning lessons which are a waste of time for so many teenagers. The 5pm finish would be helpful in terms of scheduling the lessons at a time that suits those being taught. It wouldn’t be too unwelcome a change for teachers either as, by the time we are halfway through a term we too find early mornings a real challenge! When you look at the experiments that have taken place over the years, they are remarkably consistent in terms of their results. Grades improve, attendance improves and illness reduces. Why won’t we do it across the board? Quite simply, because it’s human nature to say ‘That’s the way it was when I was a kid so that’s how it should be for everyone else’.

If you want to look at some of the theories, this is a good start, but I would be really interested in your views for or against in the comments below.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34192371