Question: Rachel what schools would you go into if you were to get the opportunity? Would it be better to go to primary, secondary or colleges?

Rachel Sharman answered on 7 Nov 2018:

Hi,

Hmm, for this public engagement prize I want to go into schools and show students how to measure sleep and help them set up a research study in their school. This would fit amazing into the extended project question that some older secondary students do and college students. I would hope to work with the older students and have them run a whole school intervention.

For my research, college is too late. I think sleep education is needed for those students and we need to look at timetables and sleep health but the behaviour of a 17-18 year old is pretty set. We tested on 1500 yr 10 secondary school pupils for our pilot and showed great response but the teachers have suggested that next time we go for year 8/9 secondary pupils. So that we can help start good sleeping practices early.
For primary school children, again I think some basic sleep monitoring by teachers would be great so those that are struggling could be identified but, as their parents still have quite a lot of control over their sleep, a big intervention for all students wouldn’t be needed.

This is just my opinion though, what do you think?