Later start time decreasing absenteeism in high school students

Don'cha wish we knew this when we were in high school!

(Oh who am I kidding? North Carolina's government is so bass-ackwards on everything, the concept would never even get the chance to fly here...)

Anyway, an experiment being conducted by an Oxford neuroscience professor at Monkseaton High School in North Tyneside in Great Britain has had students starting classes an hour later than usual, at 10 a.m. The remarkable findings of the experiment thus far are that the later class time has caused an 8% drop in general absence and a 27% drop in chronic absenteeism. Furthermore, memory testing done on the students indicate that the best time for learning more difficult lessons is in the afternoon. Researchers believe that teenagers wanting to sleep in is not a matter of laziness, but merely a component of biology adjusting during the adolescent years.

(Or maybe it's just that they're staying up at later hours playing World of Warcraft? :-P)

Categories: biology, education, medicine, neurobiology, schools, science, sleep, teenagers